Bills vs. Cardinals: Marvin Harrison Jr. could be the key to outplaying Kyler Murray

The Arizona Cardinals are not a frequent opponent of our Buffalo Bills, but they are the ones we will face at the start of 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 speaking, the team was much better when he returned. Their better streak ended at 3-5.

As for Murray specifically, despite his new head coach Jonathan Gannon, he had a pretty typical Kyler Murray season. I'll sprinkle in a few stats below, but the bottom line is that a “pretty typical Kyler Murray season” is statistically outside the league's elite.

A proven way to help a quarterback is to have top-notch receivers to help him out, and Arizona hopes Marvin Harrison Jr. has just that. Let's take a leap!

General thoughts

You may notice that there are no Marvin Harrison Jr. GIFs in this article. There are two big reasons for that. Darrell Lane debuted his college film back in April for Buffalo Rumblings. As for his NFL film, he played a total of three snaps with zero targets in the preseason, so there's not really much point in discussing that.

This means the Cardinals are essentially debuting Harrison against the Buffalo Bills. I'm sure Harrison and Murray developed some chemistry in training camp, but they're taking a big risk by letting him get used to full-speed games without any real attempts to improve. On the other hand, Buffalo will be speculating more than usual about how Harrison might be used. As we will do in this article.

What are Marvin Harrison Jr.’s strengths/weaknesses?

Depending on which draft profile/analysis you read, the answer is basically “everything” in terms of his strengths. What stands out to me is the near-universal praise for his athleticism and the perfection of his game. The ability to score high and win contested catches also seems to be a common refrain.

Where could he play? From everything I've read, the X-receiver role seems like a safe bet. But then again, I've heard some talk about Z as well. Versatility seems to be another one of Harrison's strengths and I bet everyone on Buffalo's defense is gearing up to see him up close and personal.

Does he have any weaknesses? Shockingly, despite the high praise for his athleticism, there have been rumors that he may not play as fast as the raw numbers suggest. Likewise, physical defensive backs seem to be able to disrupt his running routes. There have also been doubts about his ability to force RAC.

What does Arizona need help with?

I've used these before because they show a wealth of information at a glance. The chart below shows the passing offense by field area last season. Note that Kyler Murray only made up half of the season, but looking at Murray's pass distribution charts from Next Gen Stats here, it seems like a not-so-bad overview of his time.

I usually highlight a few interesting points in it, but this time let's go through the entire chart by field area.

• On short left passes, there is an interesting contrast between average gain (21st in the league) and completion percentage (ninth best). The relatively high completion percentage removes a large portion of 0-yard passes from the stat. That they didn't get better than a low average in average gain suggests they relied on very short passes. In other words, they were good at creating catches, but not necessarily yards in that area of ​​the field.
• In short, there is only bad news. They had a low completion percentage and a miserable average win. That means “meh” catch percentages at best coupled with very little depth of target.
• Just to the right we see mediocre results everywhere, although this part of the field is one of the best.
• On deep left throws, no one had a worse average gain than Arizona. I didn't give the exact numbers for many of them, but you have to understand that their league-worst average gain for “deep” left targets was 5.54 yards per throw. Again, 5.54 yards. A major factor in this is the league-worst percentage of successful passes. Less than a quarter of those passes were completed successfully. That's a lot of 0-yard throws, which lowers the average gain.
• Passes to the deep center resembled short passes to the left. A respectable success rate is not enough to increase the average win.
• Last but not least, there are the passes to the deep right, where Arizona fell behind in terms of both completion rate and average win.

This is all backed up by the NFL's Next Gen Stats. Murray's average intended air yards of 7.1 are near the bottom of the league. This is the average depth of target for all passes. For comparison, Josh Allen averaged 8.6 intended air yards, which tied him with Baker Mayfield for ninth in the league. In other words, short throws from Murray help increase completion rates, but not average gain.

The straw that breaks the camel's back

I know we as Bills fans are still traumatized by a certain deep pass from a few years ago, but the 2023 version of the Arizona Cardinals were not a team that you could expect to push anyone deep on defense all that often. However, a big part of this game was not due to Kyler Murray's skill, but rather that of wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins. Hopkins wasn't part of the team last year, which is a huge factor in the mediocrity of their passing game.

It's safe to assume that Arizona was looking to replace some of that explosiveness and ability to win contested catches with the selection of Marvin Harrison Jr. By all accounts, Harrison is a real threat to replace that type of performance. It's probably a little fortunate for Buffalo that they get to take on him before he gets acclimated to the league.