Kyler Murray's Riding a Hype Wave to the NFL

Well, if you were watching the two hottest free agents in baseball go damn near an entire off-season without a deal, what would you do?

And that's after wondering how MLB can't even seem to market its best player.

So, despite the odds of a longer, physically safter career on the diamond, Kyler Murray has decided to go all-in with the NFL.

 

Dude was gonna have a lot to prove no matter what he chose.

• As the saying goes, the hardest thing to do in sport is hit a round ball with a round bat and hit it squarely; players with more raw talent than Murray have tried and died in the minors.
• His size and slight build are gonna get tested early and often at a level that's bigger and faster than what he saw in college.

He may be getting comparisons to Russell Wilson, but the Seahawks slinger is two inches taller with much more body mass and larger hands.

 

Murray's gotta return his first-round slot money to Oakland, but if his combine performance matches his hype, the guaranteed bonus he gets as an NFL first-rounder will dwarf that.

What's more, dude won't have to ride the buses from Dry Heaves, Nevada to Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania trying to prove he can hit the breaking stuff.

 

Frankly, Murray's doing things in the right order. It's surely easier to shift from football to baseball.

Hell, even Tim Tebow is doing it, and with the publicity-hungry New York Mets, he might well make The Show. Of course, it doesn't hurt that his ex-agent is now the club's general manager.

 

Two-sporter Deion Sanders still can't believe the former Sooner went pigskin over horsehide, even though both balls are now made of leather.

One can only imagine what Bo Jackson woulda done if he'd bagged football before that tackle and stuck with baseball.

 

That's the bitch. It was just a garden-variety tackle. Dislocated hip. Damaged blood vessels. Dead bone. Done.

But hype is hype, and it'll secure Murray's future up front.

Meanwhile, that wave may be cresting already. Kliff Kingsbury, for one, never thought when he said he'd take Murray No 1 overall if he was an NFL coach, now is an NFL coach. He's sticking with Josh Rosen, who discovered the hard way that an NFL offensive line can indeed be as porous as a UCLA offensive line.

 

For the record ...

• Despite all the jokes about his height, Doug Flutie claims 5-11 and is probably 5-10;
• Fran Tarkenton is still the best scrambler of all time, and he was 6-0; and
• Drew Brees is considered undersized at 6-0, and who's complaining?

Still, 5-9 is what Murray's gotta overcome, and he's got staunch supporters who make a strong case.

 

So, while Justin Verlander is doing a concise job of summarizing the state of MLB right now ...

 

... especially since an unproven college two-sport dude was watching Oakland and MLB brass fall all over themselves trying to figure out how to bend light in order to increase their offer ...

Murray's making bank while he's making waves. In two sports.