Five days before a draft that will be critical to the short- and long-term future of the Arizona Cardinals, first-year G.M. Monti Ossenfort and first-year head coach Jonathan Gannon took a break. Specifically, they took a flight to Norman, Oklahoma for the unveiling of a Kyler Murray statue at the place where he played college football.
Via Josh Weinfuss of ESPN.com, Ossenfort, Gannon, offensive coordinator Drew Petzing, quarterbacks coach Israel Woolfork, and offensive quality control coach Connor Senger attended the event, which saw Murray’s statue unveiled alongside the existing memorials to the six other Oklahoma Heisman Trophy winners: Baker Mayfield, Sam Bradford, Jason White, Billy Sims, Steve Owens, and Billy Vessels.
The unveiling of the statue at the OU spring game came two days after the unveiling of the new Cardinals uniforms. Murray was there, wearing football gear for the first time since suffering a torn ACL last season. He was smiling, happy, loose.
It’s almost as if he forgot about the fact that his timeline for 2023 is decidedly undecided, and that the team has plummeted to the depths of the league after starting the 2021 season with a 10-2 record.
“I look damn good,” he said Thursday night, laughing, when asked about the new red-on-red uniform he was wearing. “It’s gonna be hard to mess these up. Gonna win a lot of games in these, for sure.”
Gonna lose a lot of games in them, too. Especially in the short term.
And while I’ll generally defer to the personal time-management decisions made by those who have been hired to handle the most important jobs for a pro football organization, perception can become reality -- especially at a time when the reality isn’t good. Given the massive rebuild the Cardinals are facing, Ossenfort and Gannon skipping town for a trip to Norman doesn’t create the best perception as to whether they’re doing everything they possibly can to make the best possible decisions as they prepare to use or trade the eight picks the Cardinals have in the 2023 draft, starting with No. 3 overall.