Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray was very good as a rookie. He had over 3,700 passing yards and had 20 touchdown passes. According to Touchdown Wire, he was not one of the best quarterbacks with the deep ball.
However, another metric tells another story.
In Football Outsiders’ deep-ball project for the 2019 season, Murray is right at the top of the list in accuracy.
He had the best deep-ball accuracy in the league. It is different than completion percentage. It is based on whether the throws were on target or catchable. Some incompletions are accurate and some completions are inaccurate.
According to this metric, he was accurate on 61.2% of his throws that went more than 20 yards in the air, the best in the league.
He had 49 such throws and was accurate on 30 of them.
He had the 13th-most deep throws. He was one of only three quarterbacks to have at least a 60% accuracy percentage. The other two were Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson.
Murray was especially good on even deeper throws.
On throws of more than 30 yards down the field, he had 12 accurate throws in 14 attempts, good for a percentage of 86.7%, more than 26% higher than the second-best rate.
He wasn’t as good on throws from 21-30 yards. He was accurate on 51.4% (18-of-35) of those throws, which ranked 18th. The 35 attempts between 21 and 30 yards was tied for the fifth-most in the league.
His numbers were broken down even further.
On throws to the deep left, Murray was accurate on 10-of-15 throws, good for 66.7%. That was the fifth-best accuracy in that category.
On throws to the deep middle, he was also at 66.7% of his throws, making accurate throws on 8-of-12 attempts. That percentage was tied for second-best with Jimmy Garoppolo, who had half the attempts.
His lowest accuracy was to the deep right. He was on target on 12-of-22 attempts, good for 54.5%. That was the 10th-best rate and tied for the 10th-most attempts.
With Murray’s accuracy and with the addition DeAndre Hopkins, the development of Andy Isabella and the addition of Hakeem Butler, that accuracy should turn into actual big-time production.
[vertical-gallery id=438148]
Listen to the latest from Cards Wire’s Jess Root on his podcast, Rise Up, See Red. Subscribe on Apple podcasts or Stitcher Radio.
Ep. 267
[protected-iframe id=”682ebb6e7ef6b83ea73b8875d2f5241d-112738498-106269283″ info=”https://api.spreaker.com/v2/episodes/27243565/download.mp3″ ]
Ep. 266
[protected-iframe id=”bcb747d5fc8df3747b9f1187680b5056-112738498-106269283″ info=”https://api.spreaker.com/v2/episodes/26365268/download.mp3″ ]