This NFL season is poised to be to be an exciting one in the Valley of the Sun. QB1 Kyler Murray is set to see his career become as elevated as the terrain in the Phoenix area. The 2019 #1 overall draft pick and NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year suffered no sophomore slump as he went to the Pro Bowl in 2020.
Expect him to keep developing even more this season; especially now that he’s also got the stellar A.J. Green to work with, supplementing the electric DeAndre Hopkins.
It should be a really entertaining 2021 season, for reasons both on and off the field.
And punters will have some fun to watch football to bet on this fall and winter. While the Fiesta Bowl is not a College Football Playoff game this year, it will still attract two top tier opponents as a New Year’s Six offering.
And the Cardinals are expected to fly high as a very entertaining team that should air it out and score a lot of points. Last season, the Cardinals improved on their 5-10-1 2019 record and went 8-8. The end result was a step forward, but still a disappointing in that they missed the playoffs. This year, definitely bet the over on their win projection of 8; especially given the fact that they added JJ Watt, Malcolm Butler this offseason, and drafted Purdue WR Rondale Moore.
The selection of Moore is one that went under the radar, but it’s another weapon at the disposal of Kyler Murray, who has been mostly rested this preseason.
This past Friday, Murray saw his first preseason action since 2019, completing just one of four passes for two yards. He may not feature on Saturday in the preseason finale, and he doesn’t seem too broken up about it.
“At the end of the day, it’s reps, it’s live reps, so you take something away from it but like I said this doesn’t count,” Murray said last Tuesday.
“I don’t know, that’s how I feel about it.”
Head Coach Kliff Kingsbury was mum about whether or not Kyler Murray will play this weekend, as he should be.
Honestly, there really is no point for him to put his #1, his face of the franchise out there anyway.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank, partnered with News Now. Banks, the author of “Transatlantic Passage: How the English Premier League Redefined Soccer in America” and “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry,” has regularly appeared in WGN, Sports Illustrated and the Chicago Tribune.
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