Orlovsky: Murray ‘one of the great all-time QB prospects’ if not for height

ESPN NFL analyst Dan Orlovsky has been a fan of Arizona Cardinals rookie Kyler Murray for awhile now.

“I expect Kyler Murray to rip up the NFL starting Week 1,” he said on an appearance of ESPN’s Get Up last week.

And as mandatory minicamp nears, Orlovsky has taken his praise a step forward.

“If Kyler Murray was three or four inches taller, we would have been talking about him in the, man, one of the great all-time quarterback prospects ever,” Orlosvky said Tuesday on 98.7 FM Arizona’s Sports Station’s Doug & Wolf.

Murray’s skillset is all the quarterback needs to succeed, according to the former NFL QB. The first step is his mental makeup.

“Look at the things he can do to beat you,” Orlovsky explained. “Can he beat you with his brain? Absolutely. Watch the tape. [Oklahoma head coach] Lincoln Riley himself said that the most underrated thing of his game is how well he sees the game of football.”

Second is the physical tools.

“Can he beat you with his arm?” Orlovsky said. “Watch him throw the ball. Sometimes you can watch a guy and go ‘Wow, that’s different.’ The production in college was outrageous. Can he beat you with his legs? Everyone knows the incredible athlete he is.”

The third part of Orvlosky’s prospective success for Murray comes from not what Murray can do, but what defenses are going to be able to do (or lack there of) against him.

“You’re also going to have defensive coordinators that are going to be a little hesitant to do some complex stuff defensively because of the different tempos that Kingsbury is going to use,” Orlovsky explained. “You’re going to have defensive coordinators not be willing to dial up a bunch of different kind of complex defenses because they don’t want to get caught being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

But it’s not just Murray that Orlovsky believes in.

“It starts with Kliff [Kingsbury] and his offensive success,” he said.

“Kliff has been incredibly productive as an offensive mind at the college level and I expect that to transfer over.”

The combination of the two has a chance to be special, according to Orlovsky.

“You take a guy that understands offensive football, understands how to put players in position to do what they do really well. And put him with a player that’s really special? I have no reason to think that that offense isn’t going to be clicking.”