Arizona Cardinals head coach Kliff Kingsbury's love for Kyler Murray was no secret, leading to the team making the quarterback the No. 1 overall pick of the 2019 NFL Draft.
Kingsbury's well-documented deep admiration of the rookie continued Wednesday during a guest appearance on The Jim Rome Show, where the first-year coach gave high compliments of Murray and emphasized the offense would be built around the signal-caller's skill set.
While it's certainly easy to project Murray as the starter in Week 1 of the regular season, Kingsbury apparently isn't ready to make that determination.
"We'll see," Kingsbury told Rome. "We're still working through all those things. We have Brett Hundley here -- who we're very excited about -- but we'll see where that kind of goes."
OK, the biggest takeaway from Kingsbury's commentary is coach-speak is alive and well in early May regardless how the organization feels about Hundley, who joins his third NFL team since entering the league in 2015.
All the signs point directly to Murray starting, especially when considering the Cardinals quickly moved on from second-year quarterback Josh Rosen, the team's first-round pick in 2018.
Moreover, Cardinals general manager Steve Keim provided the team's plan during a Monday guest appearance on The Rich Eisen Show when asked directly if Murray would open the regular season as the starter against the Detroit Lions.
"Yes," Keim said emphatically.
"You did not stutter," Eisen responded.
"No," Keim said while Eisen chuckled. "We didn't draft him [No.] 1 overall to ride the pine. I know it's a lot to put on his back, but that's why we drafted him."
Ultimately, the only way at this point for Hundley to start the regular season is if Murray suffers an injury during the summer.
And in an unlikely scenario where Hundley beats out Murray for the starting job, the Cardinals' talent evaluators might have some explaining to do.
UPDATE: One day after his appearance on The Jim Rome Show, Kingsbury made an appearance on SiriusXM's Mad Dog Sports Radio and changed his tune from "we'll see" to more commitment to Murray as the starter.
"We're going to work through that over the next couple weeks," Kingsbury told host Adam Schein. "You don't take him in our situation at No. 1 to sit him on the bench."
The head coach's comments are now on the same page as Keim's.
