Mental recovery from ACL injury a milestone for Cardinals’ Kyler Murray،
TEMPE, Ariz. — On film, it looked like a typical stampede.
After a low hit, Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray backed away, but before he could get back into position, he saw Atlanta Falcons linebacker Bud Dupree closing in and took the split-second decision to escape the pocket. As he had done hundreds of times before, Murray took off and evaded a defender with his speed before returning the ball to avoid a sack.
The play seemed, like Murray’s pass, to be a throwaway play. It was 5.5 seconds into a three-hour game, a meaningless third down on the third play of the game.
But for Murray, the play was monumental.
It was the first time Murray appeared in a game with his surgically repaired right knee since Dec. 12, 2022, when he tore his ACL. It was the moment that interested Murray in the days leading up to his first match in 11 months. He knew that when he took off and ran for the first time, it would define his comeback.
“Doing it for the first time, when I got that third try, I felt a little slow, but it was kind of an eye-opener, like, ‘OK, everything’s fine,'” said Murray. “Then I was just feeling some aches and pains after the game, but other than that I prepared hard for this moment.”
For this play to happen, Murray had to fully trust his knee.
Getting to this point wasn’t just a physical journey. It was mental too.
“You have to be mentally locked in, whether you’re off the field or on the field,” Murray said. “It doesn’t just light up.”
Cardinals coach Jonathan Gannon wanted both lined up when he returned. From the moment he was hired in February, Gannon was consistent with his message: he wanted Murray’s mental health to reflect his physical health.
“They get into car accidents for their job, to make a living,” Gannon said of NFL players. “So I always think that even if your body is healthy to play, I think your brain has to be healthy to play and there is a certain aspect in players that you have to have confidence in that that your body allows you to do.
“I’ve seen guys who have come back and they don’t look like they’re normal. It’s usually not the physical, it’s the mental.”
Overcoming mental obstacles during rehabilitation can be done in several ways, said Dr. John Murray (no relation to Kyler Murray), a clinical and sports psychologist who has worked with NFL players. Visualization and mental imagery, as well as muscle relaxation, are treatment options that can help athletes overcome the most difficult scenarios, sometimes more difficult than what they will actually encounter on the field, Dr. Murray said . Rebuilding a player’s confidence through positive self-talk and showing them how others have recovered from similar injuries also helps the process. Often, players will lose vigor and energy after sustaining an injury or being hit by bouts of depression or withdrawal, Dr. Murray added.
For about a quarter of injured players, Dr. Murray said the thought of getting injured again is a “really big factor.”
For professional athletes returning from ACL surgery, the risk of having another ACL injury is about 20% higher, according to Dr. James Tibone, co-director of sports medicine and orthopedics specialist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Los Angeles Center.
Kyler Murray didn’t know what everyone meant when they talked about mental obstacles, until he overcame them.
“Once you’re in that moment, or you’re feeling down or whatever, then you’re in that zone and it’s not a good feeling,” Murray said. “Everyone here has probably felt something about themselves or the situation they’re in, or you never know why you feel the way you feel.
“You just have to pray about it and try to be happy and choose to be happy. For me, I’ve been really persistent and just tried to stay strong through it all. I’ve tried to stay positive and optimistic about my improvement faster than they said [I would]”.
What Murray experienced after that first scrimmage is what other quarterbacks returning from ACL injuries have experienced.
When Los Angeles Rams quarterback Carson Wentz returned from his ACL injury, which he suffered in December 2017 with the Philadelphia Eagles, three games into the 2018 season, he needed a few deployments and a dive to say: “Good? “.
From there, he slowly returned to his pre-injury state, a process that took a few games, he said.
Rebuilding confidence in a surgically repaired knee doesn’t happen quickly, Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow said.
“It takes time,” he said. “It really takes a long time. You’re going to play before you feel 100 percent and that’s just how it goes in this kind of rehab as long as you want to get back out there with your guys.
“It takes years to get back to where you were in all your exercises. It just takes a lot of work.”
It took Burrow, who tore an ACL in November 2020, until last offseason for his repaired left knee to feel as strong as his right knee during drills. Detroit Lions quarterback Teddy Bridgewater, who missed two seasons after tearing an ACL and dislocating his knee in August 2016, said he had to do things outside of football to helping him rebuild confidence in his knee, such as basketball and cliff jumping. The unpredictability of where he would land on a bounce helped build Bridgewater’s confidence in his knee.
During Murray’s rehabilitation, he relied on Cardinals senior reconditioning coordinator Buddy Morris and his doctors to reassure him about his knee’s progress.
I go out and run for the first time, and I’m limping and I look scared, and then I see a video of me or whatever, and I’m like, ‘OK, that doesn’t look ‘It’s true,’ Murray said. “Immediately the fear goes away, then the cut, it’s the same thing. For me to get better, I have to trust him. If the doctor tells me I’m fine, if Buddy says I’m fine, then We are fine.
“As far as being scared, one day these reps are kind of hesitant, but after that we have to go, so it was kind of that mindset.”
Part of Murray’s comeback process was playing without a double. The move, former NFL quarterback Robert Griffin III said, will help Murray feel like himself.
“Wearing the brace is a constant reminder that you’ve been injured,” said Griffin, a former NFL quarterback who tore the ACL, LCL and meniscus in one of his knees and is now an analyst at ESPN. “I’m happy that Kyler is doing this. … It means that not only are the doctors comfortable, but the player is comfortable with where he’s at physically, that he can do this.
“Kyler, he needs every one of his weapons, and one of his weapons is his ability to move. It’s always been like that for him. He can be a stay-in-the-pocket quarterback, but he’s the dynamic quarterback at 200 million dollars that they I paid him to be if he has everything.
It was around nine months into recovery that Murray began to feel like he could start playing again. At the start of the season, Murray requested to be kept off the physically unable to perform list because he did not want to miss the first four games of the season. But he wasn’t rushed.
It’s not easy to keep an NFL player looking to return from a serious injury at bay, Griffin said.
“I’ll tell you right now, just like players, the way we’re wired, we’re all type A personalities and we think if we’re 70 percent, we’re 100 percent,” Griffin said.
There’s no such thing, Griffin said, as a quarterback taking too long to return from an ACL injury.
Before Murray returned on Nov. 12 against the Falcons, he wanted to get that first point out of the way. Morris tried to replicate situations during Murray’s rehabilitation to prepare him to take off and move. But, like his quarterback counterparts who have undergone the same course of rehabilitation, he didn’t know how his knee would hold up or how he would handle it mentally until it happened.
Every time it happened, at any point in the match, Murray knew it would mean he was back.
“He kind of looked like who I thought he would look like,” Gannon said. “Probably a little better.”
ESPN NFL Nation reporters Sarah Barshop, Ben Baby and Eric Woodyard contributed to this report.
