It has been two games and, after about as good a performance as we have seen from Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray, he looks ready for a dominant season.
Through two games, he has the following numbers:
- 428 passing yards
- 4 TD passes
- 116 rushing yards
Extrapolate those through a full season, and these are the totals for 17 games:
- 3,638 passing yards
- 34 TD passes
- 986 rushing yards
While that falls short of the 4,000-yard passing mark, those numbers are very similar to the seasons that Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson had in his two MVP seasons.
In 2019, he had 3,127 passing yards, 36 TD passes and 1,206 rushing yards with seven scores.
Last season, he passed for 3,678 yards and 24 touchdowns. He rushed for 821 yards and five touchdowns.
He was a unanimous MVP in 2019 and nearly unanimous last year.
Now, the bigger factor is team wins. He won 13 games as a starter each of those seasons.
As Cards Wire’s Howard Balzer noted months ago, MVPs come from teams with lots of wins. The Cardinals would probably need to surprise the league and win the division or at least hit 11 wins with Murray amassing the numbers he has done so far.
Of course, if he is playing at that level, it is very possible the Cardinals can win that many games.
We saw Murray play lights-out football in the final three games of last season.
In fact, if we combine the final three games of last season with the first two games of this season, based on his per-game play, he would have 3,916 passing yards, 34 TD passes and 697 rushing yards.
Those aren’t guaranteed MVP numbers, but they would certainly put him in the conversation, especially if the Cardinals are winning games, too.
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