49ers HC Kyle Shanahan Heaps Praise on Cardinals QB Kyler Murray

He's one of the most dangerous players in the NFL. And he'll face the 49ers at Levi's Stadium on Sunday.

Grant Cohn | Oct 2, 2024

Sep 29, 2024; Glendale, Arizona, USA; Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray (1) looks on in the second half against the Washington Commanders at State Farm Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Matt Kartozian-Imagn Images / Matt Kartozian-Imagn Images

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San Francisco 49ers

SANTA CLARA -- Even though the Cardinals are 1-3, Kyler Murray is having the best season of his career.

He's completing 69.4 percent of his throws. He has six touchdown passes and just one interception. He's averaging 10.4 yards per completion and a whopping 10.3 yards per rushing attempt. And his passer rating is a career-high 104.6. He's one of the most dangerous players in the NFL. And he'll face the 49ers at Levi's Stadium on Sunday.

“He just looks so much more comfortable," 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan said on Wednesday. "I thought he looked really good last year when he came in, just watching their offense, seeing him in that new scheme for the first time. I think he got to sit back and watch other guys do it. And then him coming in, you could tell he really consciously tried to play within the confines of the offense, which was different to see, just how the scheme was before. And then always when he isn't playing in the confines of the offense, how he can be the scariest guy in the league. Kyler has always played at a pretty high level, when he is healthy, and he's doing that right now.”

Meaning Murray played off-schedule more frequently in the past than he is now?

“Yeah, more off-schedule, just the style of it," Shanahan said. "This one, it's similar to a little bit of what we faced last week, with the Cleveland background of offensive scheme and everything. Just watching him get in there and operate it after watching Joshua Dobbs, and some other guys, operate it earlier in the year, you could see he's going to always put his wrinkle on everything, but you could see he was really taking coaching and playing within the scheme and when it was time not to doing what he does as good as anybody in the league.”

Maybe I'm crazy, but it almost sounds like Shanahan thinks Murray is better than his own quarterback, Brock Purdy.

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Published Oct 2, 2024

GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.