Cardinals’ Kliff Kingsbury: Murray has taken an ‘immediate’ leadership role

Arizona Cardinals head coach Kliff Kingsbury is about to lead his team in his first NFL game as a coach on Thursday.

It’s not a regular season game, but this pre-season matchup will be the first game featuring some of the new offense in play.

It will also be quarterback Kyler Murray’s first NFL game and how long he’ll be on the field (if at all) unknown.

After over a week into training camp, Kingsbury joined 98.7 FM Arizona’s Sports Station’s Bickley & Marotta to talk about Murray’s familiarity with the offense and how they’ve been working with the headsets.

As far as Murray’s comfort level, his coach has seen him take a leadership role due to his vast knowledge of the offense.

“Being able to kinda build it around him and do things that he’s done before and feels comfortable with, that has allowed him to step in and take a leadership role immediately,” Kingsbury said. “Meaning that he knows what to do better than anyone else on the field and I think that’s helped accelerate how he has handled the team and how he has handled the offense. So hopefully those things continue.”

Headset communication is something Murray and Kingsbury have been working on during practice in training camp and the two have started to be become more accustomed to the new line of communication.

“We’re probably overdoing it at this point,” Kingsbury said. “Every walk-through, every opportunity we have I put it on and just communicate that way. I think it has came a long way from the first time we did it for both of us and now we’re definitely more comfortable.

“We’ll continue to figure out our best way to communicate but I like where we’re at with it.”

When asked about pressure to showcase a game-changing new offense, Kingsbury said all that matters is to give the fans a team to be proud of.

“I think I was brought here to do what’s best for the organization and that is to improve from last place,” he said. “That’s our goal is to give this state, community a product and a team that they deserve and can be proud of.

“I think you’ve seen the changes that were made in the offseason personnel-wise and guys we’ve brought in and the high character guys we’ve drafted, that’s all part of the plan and we just have to continue to get better.”

As far as this week goes, it’s all about preparing for Thursday’s pre-season game against the Los Angeles Chargers.

“I think this week we really have to tighten up our mechanics, clean some up some penalties going into Thursday,” Kingsbury said.

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