Jonathan Gannon says the opportunity to coach Kyler Murray is one of the main reasons he took the Arizona Cardinals’ head coach job, and he is planning to make at least one significant change to the way the star quarterback is utilized.
Gannon told Peter King of NBC Sports that Arizona’s offense is going to look “much different” next season. The former Philadelphia Eagles offensive coordinator says Murray will be under center a lot more than he was when Kliff Kingsbury was in charge.
“I think we can take him to another level and unleash his full skill set. We’re not gonna put him in gun all the time, I’ll tell you that. We’ll have two significant offenses with his skill set: one being under center and one being in the gun,” Gannon said.
Gannon believes putting Murray under center will take pressure off of the offensive line. He thinks that may have been the “missing piece” in Arizona last season.
“They were in gun all the time. When you’re in gun all the time, you don’t make the defense defend certain play types,” Gannon added. “Now, when you get him under center, the defense has to defend a lot more type of play types. So there’s really two offenses I see us using.”
When you look at how often Murray has been in the shotgun over the past three seasons, the numbers are staggering. Kingsbury had Murray in the shotgun on 92.3 of snaps since 2020, according to NFL Research. Murray led all quarterbacks in shotgun percentage at 95.4 percent last season.
#AZCardinals HC Jonathan Gannon to @peter_king on Kyler Murray: “We’re not gonna put him in gun all the time, I’ll tell you that. We’ll have two significant offenses with his skill set: one being under center and one being in the gun.”@NFLResearch on Murray in gun last 3 years: https://t.co/2bpJA17ntP pic.twitter.com/dLu1Iwca7q
— Mike Garafolo (@MikeGarafolo) February 20, 2023
Murray was openly frustrated with Kingsbury last year. There were some troubling reports about the state of the relationship between the two, which undoubtedly contributed to Kingsbury’s ousting.
Obviously, Gannon is confident he can fix the issues Murray had when the former No. 1 overall pick returns from his torn ACL.
