How High Would Kyler Murray Get Drafted in the NFL?

Getty Images Oklahoma's Kyler Murray warming up.

Professional football just isn’t in the cards for Oklahoma Sooners’ star quarterback, Kyler Murray. The two-sport standout athlete may be the face of the Sooners football team, but it won’t be long until he’s swinging a baseball bat out in Oakland, California as he was drafted ninth overall to the Athletics back in June.

Murray, a redshirt Junior, is currently amongst a select few NCAA football players that are favored to win the Heisman Trophy for his outstanding play. Typically, a Heisman Trophy candidate beyond his freshman season would be impatiently waiting to hear their name called early on in the NFL Draft the following spring. But for Murray, the award would be just another trophy to add to his shelf for a sport he won’t even pursue professionally.

It’s going to be tough for NFL Draft analysts to watch Murray go. As he is one of the nations most exciting dual-threat quarterback’s to watch, we don’t have much time left with him in the sport beyond this season. That doesn’t necessarily mean that everybody isn’t talking about where Murray would get drafted, though.

ESPN’s draft guru’s Mel Kiper, and Tod McShay recently sat down together to discuss the potential of Murray’s football career. If we were to assume and pretend that Murray is going to NFL, just how high would he get drafted?

An Outlook on Murray’s NFL Potential

Size matters in the NFL for a quarterback. Although there are a few passer’s who could be looked at as ‘undersized’ it’s very rare that the smaller guys succeed as a starter. For dual-threat quarterback’s the best in the business is hands down, Russell Wilson. He stands at five-foot-eleven inches tall, and weighs 206-pounds.

Obviously, Wilson’s size is not the prototype for an NFL quarterback. That’s where his game makes up for the way that he looks. And just like Kyler Murray, Wilson was also drafted to the MLB. But he clearly took the football route. Heading into the NFL Draft, though, Wilson wasn’t quite the prospect that Murray is. And all because of his undesirable size for an NFL quarterback, Wilson slipped to the Seahawks in the third-round.

Being that Murray is slightly smaller than Wilson standing at five-foot-eleven-inches, weighing 194-pounds, that would undoubtedly be his biggest draft concern.  If you ask Kiper and McShay, they would tell you that Murray would get drafted in the second-round as the earliest. And even that could be a push. So, if Murray were to declare, the two analysts are under the assumption that Murray is a third-round pick.

Murray is impressive, no doubt. But his questionable size, and little experience would make it difficult for NFL teams to evaluate this early on. The good news is that NFL front offices have don’t really have to worry about it. With Murray, we can all sit back and just enjoy his Heisman-worthy season without talking draft strategies.

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