NFL: Quarterbacks who deserve to be benched before Week 5
By John Buhler
Yes, these NFL starting quarterbacks played so badly in Week 4 they may need to be benched.
Another week, another set of NFL quarterbacks that played poorly and need to hold a clipboard.
Because many quarterbacks did play well in Week 4, it makes those that did not stick out like a sore thumb. We have some of the usual suspects getting their seemingly weekly scrutiny, but we have at least one guy who might need a firm talking to by his head coach to play better in the second quarter of the increasingly wonky 2020 NFL season. Let’s bench some dudes, y’all!
Here are quarterbacks who need to put on a hat and be a Week 5 spectator.
Arizona Cardinals. Kyler Murray. 32. Scouting Report. Pick Analysis. QB. 3. player
What a banner weekend if was for the Air Raid. After upsetting the LSU Tigers in Death Valley, Mike Leach’s Mississippi State Bulldogs lost at home to the Arkansas Razorbacks. Lincoln Riley’s Oklahoma Sooners fall to 1-2 and 0-2 in Big 12 play. Kliff Kingsbury‘s Arizona Cardinals looked rather pedestrian against the Carolina Panthers. Kyler Murray did not wow us offensively.
There is no chance in hell Kingsbury benches Murray next week in favor of Brett Hundley, but how can you expect to win games when your starting quarterback only throws the ball for 133 yards and averages a putrid 4.3 yards per attempt? Though he threw for three touchdowns and ran the ball six times for 78 yards, the Cardinals have lost in consecutive weeks to fall to 2-2.
Carolina is supposedly a rebuilding team under new head coach Matt Rhule, yet the Panthers are at 2-2 and have the head-to-head tiebreaker over the Cardinals. If the Panthers had a strength heading into the season, it had to be on the offensive side of the ball with Teddy Bridgewater at quarterback, Christian McCaffrey at running back and D.J. Moore at wide receiver for Joe Brady.
Without McCaffrey, the Panthers got an easy win over a Cardinals team that is beginning to question if Murray will live up to the hype. That side of the ball should be outstanding for Arizona, yet here we are. Though he didn’t have a three-pick performance like he did against the Detroit Lions last week, Murray should have been able to carve up this Panthers defense and he did not.