Does Kyler Murray really play worse after a Call of Duty release?

In all probability, you know who Kyler Murray is. The Arizona Cardinals quarterback is one of the more visible athletes in both sports and gaming as he’s also a member of FaZe Clan in addition to his exploits on the football field.

You might not know exactly what’s the deal with Kyler Murray and Call of Duty, however. Simply put, Murray loves CoD. He loves it so much, in fact, that some Cardinals fans are concerned that the game has interfered with his play on the field—and there are some stats to back up that thought.

From the beginning, here’s the entire Kyler Murray CoD saga, explained.

Does Kyler Murray play worse when new Call of Duty games release?

Yes. Kind of.

It’s difficult to tell for certain whether CoD is the reason why Murray seems to perform less than his best on some days. But over the course of the first three seasons of his NFL career, there’s been drop-offs in his performances that seem to have coincided with major CoD releases.

New games, events, and double XP weekends have appeared to knock Murray’s statistics down for the most part from 2019 to 2021, and the Cardinals have accordingly struggled when Murray has struggled. The team has only managed to make the playoffs one time in Murray’s career, and in Murray’s only playoff game, they lost 34-11 to the Los Angeles Rams. Murray threw for only 137 yards, completing just 19 of his 34 pass attempts, and also threw two interceptions and no touchdowns.

The game took place on Jan. 17, 2022, less than a week after Call of Duty released midseason updates for both Vanguard and Warzone Pacific.

The discussion about Murray and his video game playing even went as far as his new contract for the Cardinals. It was reported in the summer of 2022 that when Murray signed a contract extension, his new contract included an “independent study” clause that would require him to complete four hours of football study a week provided for him by the team to help him prepare for upcoming games.

Many people interpreted this independent study clause as a measure to curb some of Murray’s gaming and make sure that the QB was staying focused on football more of the time. The clause was eventually eliminated from Murray’s contract after it was roundly criticized on social media and by some major journalists, leading to the Cardinals saying that the clause was misinterpreted and ultimately had simply caused distractions from the team.

At any rate, it’s generally true that over the first few seasons of his career, Murray played worse football directly after major CoD updates and events. But those performances could also be a set of coincidences of scheduling and off-days since he hasn’t always followed a major CoD release with a poor performance.

Has Kyler Murray been worse since Modern Warfare 2 was released?

Actually, for the brief amount of time he was playing after MW2’s release, he was better than normal.

Murray got hurt shortly after the release of MW2 this year and he subsequently has not played any NFL games after the release of Warzone 2, either. But just days after the release of MW2 on Oct. 27, Murray put together his best performance of the NFL season.

Against the Minnesota Vikings in Minnesota on Oct. 30, Murray threw for 326 yards and three touchdowns, eclipsing his single-game season highs with each mark. He also threw two interceptions in a close game that the Cardinals ultimately lost, but it was easily Murray’s most impressive outing of 2022 even with those slip-ups.

It’s difficult to analyze Murray’s performances this season in the NFL and compare them to CoD launch dates simply because Murray and Arizona haven’t been very good almost all season and, as such, there haven’t been any major dips. But his best week coming directly after the launch of MW2 does suggest that the fan theory that Murray plays poorly after big CoD releases might just be a lot of hot air.