Kyler Murray remained confident in the Cardinals offense as he overcame a “pretty ugly” start to his NFL debut to inspire a comeback against the Lions.
The first pick in the 2019 draft struggled to get going in his first regular-season outing, with the Cardinals trailing 24-6 early in the fourth quarter after T.J. Hockenson reeled in a 23-yard pass from quarterback Matthew Stafford.
However, Murray engineered an impressive rally with the clock against him, throwing touchdown passes to David Johnson and Larry Fitzgerald before a successful two-point PAT attempt to Christian Kirk leveled the score with less than a minute remaining.
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After going into overtime, both teams registered field goals on their opening drives but were unable to add any further points, meaning the Week 1 thriller finished 27-27.
“I’m very confident in myself and the offense whenever we have the ball in our hands, no matter what it’s looking like,” said Murray, who completed 29 of his 54 passes for 308 yards with two touchdowns and an interception.
“It was obviously pretty ugly at first, but you’ve just got to stay the course. It’s a long game and I’m proud of the way we fought — unfortunately we couldn’t get the win, but a tie is better than a loss.
“I’ve never tied before. It’s better than the loss, that’s all I can say.”
Murray was not the only rookie for the Cardinals, as Kliff Kingsbury took charge of his first game as the franchise’s new head coach.
Kingsbury accepted the blame for Arizona’s offensive struggles in the opening three quarters, telling reporters: “I did a poor job early trying to be too cute, over-creative.
“I think sometimes when you have all summer to draw stuff up, you kind of get out of your comfort zone. I think it affected our quarterback early.”
Murray, though, insisted no individual was to blame for the early issues and pinpointed an increase in pace as the key for the Cardinals’ strong finish down the stretch.
“We’ve just got to execute better at the end of the day. It’s not any one person’s fault,” he said. “I think we just started doing what we were good at.
“I don’t want to say simple, but just running our stuff and just going fast. I think that opened everything up.”