Oklahoma quarterback Kyler Murray hears his name in the mix as a first-round draft pick.
On the heels of turning down a pro baseball career, the Heisman Trophy winner has not decided what his level of participation will be at the 2019 NFL Scouting Combine held next week in Indianapolis.
Murray is scheduled to be available to media along with 300-plus prospects invited to the event, but past top quarterbacks have not always participated in the testing or on-field events. He would submit to drug and medical testing – as do all prospects – and face-to-face interviews with NFL teams held in the evening. Perhaps the biggest test Murray faces is scrutiny over his height.
With comparisons to Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson – at 5-foot-11, Wilson was a third-round draft pick out of Wisconsin – and other players shorter than the NFL QB prototype casting a shadow, Murray said Monday night at the Davey O’Brien Award banquet that he’s taking the pre-draft talk as a positive. “I’ve been a 5-10 (QB) projected in the first (round), I mean, that’s crazy to me, the fact that I’m already projected that high,” Murray said.
“I’m not over 6-foot. I haven’t seen that since I’ve been alive. I’m never the biggest guy on the football field. That’s not the way I think, ‘I’m the smallest guy on the field, I have to go out there and do this and do that.’ I just go out there and play.”
Murray, 21, said the last time he was timed in the 40-yard dash he ran a 4.3, and that was two years ago. Last February, then-Oklahoma quarterback Baker Mayfield – the No. 1 pick last April of the Cleveland Browns – participated in throwing drills.
He and Buffalo Bills first-round pick Josh Allen topped 60 mph on the Lucas Oil Stadium velocity gun, the only two in that elite class to put up the stellar spin rate. Murray’s arm, according to Sooners coach Lincoln Riley, could match or exceed Mayfield’s in a velocity test.
Riley, who coached the quarterbacks in successive seasons, said height will be no more of a challenge in the NFL for Murray than it was for Mayfield. Mayfield measured 6-0 5/8 in Indianapolis last year.
Former Virginia Tech quarterback Michael Vick, who opted out of on-field testing in Indy, measured at 6-foot and ran a 4.33 40-yard dash at his pro day.
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