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Injury Breakdown: Kyler Murray - ARI


Kyler Murray is going to be the ultimate litmus test for your risk aversion in 2023. He's coming off a December ACL tear but actually didn't have surgery until January 3rd of this year. Now, Murray is undoubtedly a talented quarterback. He's averaged over 21 fantasy points per start in his NFL career. When the dude's playing, he is a stud for your fantasy team. But the problem is, I just haven't seen any indication from him or the team that they plan to rush this recovery, that they're trying to compete next year.


Now, a normal ACL recovery for an NFL quarterback is about eight to nine months. The ACL tear was described as a clean tear. That's good news for Murray. That means that timeline is going to make a lot of sense for him. The problem is, at eight months, you're going to be looking at Week One for Kyler Murray's recovery. So, are we expecting him to be exceptionally recovered at that point? Because if he's not, you're drafting him at his ceiling right now.


Now, the best-case scenario is that everything goes right and that he is ready by Week One. But that's just not something that you can bank on and expect with an ACL tear. Every ACL tear is different, every recovery is different, and just expecting him to be 100 percent, you're really just banking on best-case scenarios. We haven't seen anything that would indicate that he's having an optimal, best-case scenario recovery thus far. Very little has come out about Kyler Murray's rehab, about where he's at from just a running perspective. We should start to hear something about him coming out soon, but so far we don't have any evidence that he's recovering at just an exceptional rate at this time.


I think it's far more likely that the team decides to slow play his recovery and places Murray on the PUP to start the season. That's going to be a mandatory four games missed, but it would see him returning at the nine-month stage of his recovery, which is a lot better from an overall rehab timeline perspective. We don't really want these guys rushing back from ACL tears because we know that when they do, compensatory injuries tend to happen. You tend to have a hamstring strain, you tend to just have an underperforming season. We've seen one or two guys not have that happen to them, but for the most part, when you try to rush an ACL recovery, things go bad the next season for fantasy football.


And let's assume that Kyler Murray does come back Week One, but his greatest weapon is hampered all year, which is very common for quarterbacks, especially. They become a little bit less mobile in that first year after the ACL recovery. Now, if you look at how Kyler Murray scores his points, seven rushing attempts a game for 40 yards when he's healthy. That's nearly 20 percent of his weekly fantasy production coming off the ground. So, if you look at just, let's say we cut that in half, and we look at the seven games where Murray played but ran three times or less in his career, excluding the game that he got hurt last year, he's only averaging 15 and a half fantasy points per game. Now, mind you, his typical average is 21 fantasy points a game. So, if he averages 16 fantasy points a game, you're looking at a QB20. That's not great, not what you want to see.


And look, I understand there is a world where these guys can come back in seven months and are ready to play right away. But let's not pretend that it's the norm. Everyone wants best-case scenarios for all of

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