The Arizona Cardinals may want to move on from Kyler Murray after this season.
Ineffective this season before injury, Murray is now on IR while Jacoby Brissett starts for the Cardinals, at least for the next four weeks and maybe longer.
That has invited all sorts of Murray speculation. Could the Cardinals cut him? Will a team trade for him?
"Everything is on the table here," writes ESPN's Bill Barnwell. "At 3-6, it's tough to imagine the Cardinals making a playoff push with either Murray or Brissett at quarterback, especially since they play the league's third-toughest slate of opponents the rest of the way. If they do get hot with Murray's return, the Cardinals probably haven't hit the point of no return with the seventh-year pro. But if Brissett excels or Murray never returns from the injury, it's entirely likely that Arizona will look to find a trade partner for the 28-year-old quarterback this offseason."
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There's just one main problem when it comes to a potential Murray escape hatch.
Because of how his big contract was structured, there's basically no way to get out of the 2026 money.
Murray is due $42.5 million for the 2026 season, and guarantees pretty much make it impossible to cut him.
The Cardinals could release him and eat a ton of money, but that doesn't seem logical.
"He's owed $42.5 million next year, virtually all of which is already guaranteed," Barnwell writes. "If he's on the roster in mid-March of 2026, just over half of the $36.3 million he's owed for 2027 also becomes guaranteed. That's the last of Murray's guarantees on his current deal. He has a club option for 2028, at which point Murray and his team probably would either negotiate a new contract or he'd become a free agent, given how rarely teams let their quarterbacks play out the final year of their contracts."
Even those guarantees make a trade more difficult.
"Without a renegotiation or an extension, any team trading for Murray would essentially be on the hook for a one-year, $62 million contract or a two-year, $78.8 million deal," Barnwell writes. "Obviously, the latter would be more palatable and realistic, but we just saw the Falcons pay Kirk Cousins $90 million across two years of guarantees for about one season of starting work. It's entirely possible that a team could decide to take the plunge for one year and then move on from Murray before that second season if things don't pan out. I suspect he would have some trade value on that contract, though not as much as Cardinals fans might hope or expect."
Any kind of Murray dismissal will be a disappointing ending with the Cardinals for the former No. 1 pick. But at this point, it really does seem like a legitimate possibility that Murray is in another uniform for the 2026 season.
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