It’s been a while since we’ve seen the Cardinals. Does anyone remember how that last game ended?
The Arizona Cardinals aren’t a frequent opponent for our Buffalo Bills, but that’s who we’re facing to start the 2024 season. Last season the Cardinals were not a force to be reckoned with, finishing with a record of 4-12. Starting quarterback Kyler Murray missed the first half of the season and objectively the team was much better when he returned. Their better stretch resulted in 3-5.
Regarding Murray specifically, despite having a first-year head coach in Jonathan Gannon he had a pretty typical Kyler Murray season. I’ll sprinkle in some stats below, but the bottom line is that statistically a “pretty typical Kyler Murray season” is outside the league’s elite.
A tried-and-true way to help a quarterback is with elite receiver help. That’s what Arizona hopes they have in Marvin Harrison Jr. Let’s do a dive!
General Thoughts
You may notice that there aren’t any Marvin Harrison Jr. GIFs in this article. There are two big reasons for that. Darrell Lane already covered his college film for Buffalo Rumblings back in April. As for his NFL film, he played a grand total of three snaps in the preseason with zero targets. So there’s not really much point in reviewing that.
What this means is that the Cardinals are essentially debuting Harrison against the Buffalo Bills. I’m sure Harrison and Murray formed some chemistry in camp, but they’re taking a big gamble adjusting him to full-speed games with no real ramp-up attempt. On the flip side, Buffalo will be guessing more than usual on how Harrison may be deployed. Like we’re about to in this article.
What are Marvin Harrison Jr.’s strengths/weaknesses?
Depending on which draft profile/analysis you read the answer is basically “everything” regarding his strengths. What stands out to me is the near-universal praise for athleticism and polish to his game. The ability to high-point and win contested catches seems to be a common refrain as well.
Where might he line up? Based on the totality of what I’ve read, the X receiver role seems like a safe bet. But then again, I did see some Z talk. Versatility seems to be another strength of Harrison’s and I’m betting everyone on Buffalo’s defense is preparing to see him up close and personal.
Does he have any weaknesses? Shockingly, despite the high praise for athleticism there were decent murmurs that he might not play as fast as raw numbers might indicate. Similarly, physical defensive backs seem to be able to disrupt his routes. There were also questions on his capability to get RAC by force.
What does Arizona need help with?
I’ve used these before because they show a wealth of information at a glance. The chart below is the passing offense by area of the field last season. Note that Kyler Murray only accounted for half the season, but if you take a look at Murray’s pass distribution charts from Next Gen Stats here, this doesn’t seem to be all that bad of a review of his time.
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Typically I highlight some points of interest on these, but let’s cover the whole chart this time by area of the field.
- On short left passes, there’s an intriguing contrast between average gain (21st in league) and completion percentage (ninth best). The relatively high completion rate removes a good chunk of 0-yard passes from the stat line. Failing to achieve anything better than low-average for the average gain suggests they relied on very short passes. In other words, they were good at creating catches, but not necessarily yards in this area of the field.
- In the short middle it’s just bad news. They were low-average in completion percentage and abysmal in average gain. This translates to “meh”-at-best catch rates paired with very shallow depth of target.
- Short right we see mediocre results all around with this section of the field being one of their best.
- For deep left throws, nobody had a worse average gain than Arizona. I haven’t given the exact numbers for many of these, but I need you to process that their league-worst average gain for “deep” left targets was 5.54 yards per throw. Again, 5.54 yards. A major component of this is the league-worst completion percentage. Less than a quarter of these passes were completed. That’s a lot of 0-yard throws to bring the average gain down.
- Deep-middle passes were similar to short-left passes. A respectable completion percentage isn’t enough to elevate the average gain with it.
- Last but not least are deep-right passes where Arizona was leaning on bad in both completion percentage and average gain.
This is all backed up by the NFL’s Next Gen Stats. Murray’s 7.1 average intended air yards is near the bottom of the league. This is the average depth of target for all passes. For reference, Josh Allen had 8.6 average intended air yards, which was tied with Baker Mayfield for ninth in the league. In other words: short tosses by Murray help inflate completion percentages but not average gain.
The Final Straw
I know we as Bills fans are still traumatized by a certain deep pass a few years back, but the 2023 version of the Arizona Cardinals wasn’t a team that should be expected to burn anyone deep all that often. That said, a big part of that play wasn’t Kyler Murray’s skill level but that of wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins. Hopkins wasn’t a part of the team last year, which is a huge factor in the mediocrity of their passing game.
It’s a safe bet that Arizona was looking to replace some of that explosiveness and ability to win contested catches when they selected Marvin Harrison Jr. By all accounts, Harrison is a real threat to replace that type of production. It’s likely a little lucky for Buffalo that they get to face him before he’s acclimated to the league.