Footballing magician Kyler Murray is out to silence his doubters, so he didn’t need someone quantifying concerns around his Call of Duty habits.
Like a lot of young males, 25-year-old Kyler Murray loves gaming. Like, a lot.
So much so it came under a microscope earlier this NFL pre-season, after it was revealed his contract extension had a ‘homework’ clause. Murray faced the media to set the record straight, as the Arizona Cardinals decided to remove the clause, amid the publicity around it.
Kyler games almost as well as he balls, launching a channel on Twitch and amassing over 83,000 followers the last 12 months. He streams his gaming conquests.
He’s struggling to outrun the concerns around professional balance, though. Someone with way too much time revealed in a recent study that his performances take a slight hit on ‘Call of Duty double XP weekends’, which are weekends where the game offers double the rewards for playing.
Reddit user ‘NegativeBee’ went into a deep dive of Murray’s statistical performance during these weekends and the results seem undeniable.
Kyler’s passer rating, passing yards and completion percentage take the biggest hit during double XP weekends, but it’s win-loss record that is the most worrying. On ‘normal’ weekends, Murray’s record is 18 wins, 16 losses and a draw, while on these double XP weekends he has a 4-7 record.
The former number one pick has a reputation for starting seasons on fire, but fading as the whips really start cracking. There’s additional correlation that the release of a new game has been partly to blame.
A twitter user took a look at Kyler’s first three seasons in the league and has shown that his performance does dip after the annual release of a Call of Duty game. Although it is not a major fall-off for Murray, it is a worrying trend that has increased in the last year.
With a fresh $250 million dollar contract, Murray’s performances will be heavily scrutinised this year and his gaming will be closely linked to his upcoming season.
He’s publicly taken all this on the chin in recent weeks, labelling it ‘outside noise’.
“My team mates, my coaches, they know how much hard work i put into this,” he said during the Cardinals’ Pre-Season fixture with Baltimore earlier today.
In a shift from Call of Duty, he actually took on ‘play-calling duties’ in the second half of the game, well and truly after all the usual starters had hit the showers.
Murray is a star of the league and this season is the start of a pivotal few seasons where he’s still athletically primed, but absorbing more NFL knowledge. It means he’s also perfectly poised to rewrite the media narrative that’s hijacked his off-season.
