Can Arizona Cardinals QB Kyler Murray ever top the Hail Murray?
IT HAPPENS EVERY YEAR. There's a moment -- and there's a quarterback -- that forces us to think. Knowing that we saw something special, we wonder how it might change the game forever. In 2020, the Hail Murray was that moment, and Kyler Murray was that quarterback. On Nov. 15, when Murray's seemingly forgettable pass suddenly found DeAndre Hopkins in a thicket of Buffalo Bills as time expired, it not only won the game for the Arizona Cardinals but seemed to signify the arrival of something new. We had seen short quarterbacks before, and we had seen fast quarterbacks before and we had seen short and fast quarterbacks before. He was different, short and fast and effective, this tiny man causing chaos and uprooting norms, a stylistic anomaly destined to shift the NFL paradigm. The Hail Murray materialized over 11 seconds, but the rush of it was so strong, so spectacular, so viral and so lasting -- it was awarded Clutch Performance Play of the Year at NFL Honors -- that we missed something essential: that the league had already caught on to Kyler Murray by turning all of the elements that made the play special against him.