Kyler Murray says Bryce Harper’s Phillies jackpot didn’t make him rethink decision to choose the NFL

INDIANAPOLIS – It seemed to matter a great deal to the NFL that Kyler Murray turned out to be 5-10⅛ when he was measured this week at the league’s scouting combine, not 5-9⅝, or some such, but Murray said Friday that it didn’t matter much to him.

“Yeah, because it’s not a big difference [from projections],” Oklahoma quarterback Murray said, when asked if the hubbub struck him as strange, his official height and weight (207) making headlines, and in some observers’ view cementing him as a surefire first overall draft pick. “It is what it is. I think we can put all that to rest now. That’s one thing [good about it].”

Murray said it also didn’t matter much to him that in baseball, where the Oakland A’s drafted him ninth overall last year and gave him a $4.66 million signing bonus, the Phillies just gave free agent Bryce Harper $330 million over 13 years, guaranteed. No NFL player has ever gotten a guarantee anywhere near that size; the top figure currently is the $100 million guaranteed to Falcons QB Matt Ryan.

Murray asked a reporter how much money per year Harper’s contract entailed. Informed that it worked out to a little more than $25 million a year, Murray said: “Everyone’s making a big deal about it because it’s $330 million. There’s quarterbacks making more money than him a year.”

Well, yeah, a few are, but that’s kind of meaningless, since Harper will be getting that sum every year for 13 years, regardless of injury or performance, and those quarterbacks certainly will not.

» READ MORE: John Middleton spent big money for Bryce Harper, and he could keep going

The more relevant answer to why Murray would forfeit that $4.66 million from the A’s to play a sport where careers are shorter and the risk of debilitating injury is much greater might be the one Murray provided when asked about his commitment to football.

“Yes, it’s a final decision. I’m here, I’m ready to go. I was born a football player. I love this game,” he said. “There’s no turning back … I’m 100 percent in.”

For some football people, this has seemed a more relevant concern than Murray’s stature. Drew Brees, Russell Wilson and Murray’s Oklahoma predecessor, Baker Mayfield, have made the NFL world safe for QBs who don’t tower over their offensive linemen. However, when talented draft picks don’t succeed in the NFL, regardless of position, the issue often turns out to be commitment, loving the grind. Nobody wants a franchise quarterback who might decide a few years in that he’d just as soon go back to baseball.

Murray said he hasn’t faced a lot of skepticism in his Indianapolis meetings with NFL teams.

“For the most part, everybody’s been pretty solid, knowing I’m here to play football,” he said.

The A’s were pretty solid about Murray being there to play baseball when they signed him last year and glossed over the part about him wanting to play one season of starting quarterback at Oklahoma before buckling down to be, as analysts envisioned, “the next Rickey Henderson.”

» READ MORE: Eagles taking a close look at deep running back class

Murray began his college football career in 2015 at Texas A&M, where his father, Kevin, once was a star QB. He transferred, sat out a year, then backed up Mayfield in 2017. His first year of OU baseball was unimpressive, but in 2018 he flashed the skills that baseball analysts said would have made him a first-round pick out of high school three years earlier if he hadn’t made it clear he was going to play college football.

“People who play baseball, it’s a game of failure,” Murray said Friday, when asked how baseball has helped him as a QB. “I think that’s a lesson that has helped me a lot. Being patient … learning how to fail and come back and handling adversity.”

“This guy is fun to watch play football,” A’s vice president of baseball operations Billy Beane said last summer, when Murray signed, then took batting practice wearing green and gold. "I’m looking forward to it, I’m not fearing it, mainly because I think the athletic ability is going to be fun to watch and he’s going to be fine.

"He's really fun to watch on a football field, and he's going to be fun to watch on a baseball field. It's neat that he gets to do both, and that the country gets to see both, but we're going to get the best years, and he's going to have a great baseball career."

» READ MORE: Bryce Harper’s price tag was anything but stupid for the Phillies

Beane might not have envisioned quite how much fun Murray would have, darting around the field and making awe-inspiring throws, ultimately winning the Heisman Trophy – or how ardently the NFL would end up pursuing him.

Murray was asked Friday if he felt a weight had been lifted off his shoulders, now that his decision has been made.

“I don’t want to say ‘a weight.’ I guess you could say ‘a weight.’ When it was all out there, knowing that everybody was wondering what I was going to do, I would wake up and I would hear that stuff on the TV,” Murray said. “Now that it’s out there, I can say it has been kind of a relief just to be able to work on football, get my body right and to work on football.”

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