There’s no getting around it: Kyler Murray is short. The over-under for his height is 5-10, with the under as the betting favorite. (It should be given the University of Oklahoma already has stated he measured 5-9 7/8 in socks before last season.)
But Murray was short in high school, and he was short in college. It didn’t affect his winning percentage at either level, and his college coach, Lincoln Riley, expects Murray to measure up in the NFL, too.
“Oh, I think it’s just talking about how we used him and how, between having Baker [Mayfield] and Kyler here, [we haven’t had] a scenario where we said, ‘Well we’re not going to run this play or not going to run that play or not going to protect this or like this or that because these guys are 5-10 and 6-foot instead of 6-4,’” Riley said of his conversations with NFL coaches during an interview with SiriusXM NFL Radio on Wednesday. “I mean, it’s just never come into the equation with us, and we do quite a bit with those guys.
“I think Kyler is like Baker in that he is short. He’s been short all of his life. He’s learned to deal with it. It’s not a factor for him. We had an NFL-sized offensive line [averaging 6-5, 316 pounds] and played against a lot of really, really good defensive lines. I mean, the guy I think had four or five batted down passes I think the whole season. It’s just not much of a factor as much as people would think it is. We’ve gotten to live that for really the last four years playing with guys would consider short for typical quarterbacks, and it was never an issue for us. I think it’s something that will get made a lot of at draft time, and I think Kyler starts playing, like Baker, I don’t think it will be a factor at all.”
