Kyler Murray is coming home for his expected return from a two-game injury absence as the Arizona Cardinals visit the Dallas Cowboys.<\/p>\n
The venue is as close to a sure thing as possible, with the former Dallas-area high school and Oklahoma quarterback going into Monday night’s game trying to end\u00a0his team’s five-game losing streak.<\/p>\n
Murray is 9-0 at AT&T Stadium, which was first his schoolboy championship venue before it was the place he won a Big 12 title with the Sooners, and now has two victories as the 2019 No. 1 overall pick leading the Cardinals (2-5).<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully it means he\u2019s due to lose one. Kyler, if you want to help,\u201d said Cowboys coach Brian Schottenheimer, who tries to have fun by talking directly to people by looking at the camera. \u201cBut, no, obviously you can\u2019t speak about Kyler Murray without talking about what an incredible player he was at Allen in high school. Maybe one of the greatest high school quarterbacks of all time. I\u2019m sure he\u2019ll be excited to come back here, very comfortable playing here.\u201d<\/p>\n
His counterpart is aware.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve heard that stat,\u201d said Dak Prescott, who would love to start a winning streak for the Cowboys (3-4-1) in a\u00a0season without consecutive victories or defeats. \u201cI think that\u2019s mad impressive. Not honestly surprised. Something that I\u2019m sure he wants to continue and build off of, and I\u2019m here to make sure that doesn\u2019t happen this Monday.\u201d<\/p>\n
Murray has some work to do to convince Arizona fans the switch back from Jacoby Brissett is a good thing, given that the 32-year-old veteran backup had 599 yards passing in the two games Murray missed with a foot injury, boosting a passing offense that was ranked 30th when Murray got hurt.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we looked at a couple things that might help him out that he feels maybe a little more comfortable with in some things that we\u2019ve been doing,\u201d Cardinals coach Jonathan Gannon said. \u201cBut he\u2019ll be his normal self when he gets out there.\u201d<\/p>\n
A chance to reset<\/p>\n
The Cardinals lost all five games on their current skid by a combined 13 points, a shockingly low number. The first three came on last-play field goals. This leads Gannon to believe last week’s bye came at a good time.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do think it\u2019s a good little time to reset here and really focus on some controllables moving forward as it relates to everybody playing a little bit better,\u201d Gannon said.<\/p>\n
Monday, Monday<\/p>\n
The Cowboys are about to be just the second NFL team to play consecutive games on a Monday. Their bye is next week, and they visit the Las Vegas Raiders on Nov. 17.<\/p>\n
The Raiders were the only other team to do it, in 1996 under the same circumstances. The then-Oakland franchise’s two Monday night games were separated by the open week.<\/p>\n
Dallas has a Thanksgiving Day game every year, along with plenty of prime-time outings. So quirky schedules are nothing new.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think people love or hate the Cowboys, and that\u2019s part of why we play, how we play, where we play and whatnot,\u201d Schottenheimer said. \u201cIt really doesn\u2019t matter. These guys are going to play anybody any time, anywhere. I can\u2019t say that it\u2019s not something that is definitely noticeable when you look at the schedule.\u201d<\/p>\n
Campbell’s milestone<\/p>\n
Arizona defensive lineman Calais Campbell is set for his 250th start. The 39-year-old \u2014 a six-time Pro Bowl selection \u2014 has been productive in his 18th NFL season. He has three sacks, two behind team leader Josh Sweat, and 19 tackles.<\/p>\n
The milestone will come in the Monday night spotlight for a player who spent his first nine seasons in Arizona as a second-round pick, was a 2017 All-Pro with Jacksonville in the first of eight seasons elsewhere and is now in his first year back with the team that drafted him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don’t know if you guys can tell, but I love football,\u201d Campbell said. \u201cIt started from being a kid and watching the big prime-time games. Back then there was only a few games on TV, but the Monday night game was always the biggest.\u201d<\/p>\n
Take those stats and shove them<\/p>\n
The Cowboys are dealing with the frustration of an up-and-down season, including probably their best and worst games in consecutive weeks. A 44-22 victory over Washington was followed by a 44-24 loss at Denver.<\/p>\n
All the talk is a team with one of the NFL’s best offenses and worst defenses. Schottenheimer is growing weary of the narrative.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur scorecard is what it is,\u201d Schottenheimer said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s not just defensively. That\u2019s offensively. We\u2019re a football team that\u2019s 3-4-1. You can take stats on offense and shove them as far as I\u2019m concerned. It is what it is. We want to win.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kyler Murray is coming home for his expected return from a two-game injury absence as the Arizona Cardinals…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29710,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[150,8079,102,113,104,103],"class_list":{"0":"post-29709","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-arlington","9":"tag-att-stadium","10":"tag-dallas","11":"tag-dallas-cowboys","12":"tag-dallas-headlines","13":"tag-dallas-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}