Cards’ Murray plans for return ‘to be a good day’

TEMPE, Ariz. — Days away from his return to the field after tearing his ACL 11 months ago, Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray said Thursday that he’s “emotionless” as he prepares to play the Atlanta Falcons.

“Emotions haven’t really hit me,” Murray said in his first comments since August. “I’m trying to focus to get a win first. Get a win first.”

Murray said he’s trying to stay even keeled after a “long, long” time away from football — something he’s never experienced in his career — and that he’s missed football “a ton.”

He believes his injury happened for a reason.

“I just feel like I gained a new level of resiliency with this,” Murray said. “I already felt like [I] had that chip on my shoulder, you know? Never out of anything, never down, always feel like I can win anything. But when you go through something like this, you find out really quick about who you are and what you’re about.”

Murray said he began feeling like he was ready to play in September, and he started looking at the schedule around Week 4 to see when he potentially could return to the field. His return Sunday against the Falcons will come 11 months to the day since he injured his knee on “Monday Night Football” against the New England Patriots.

“I plan for it to be a good day,” he said.

However, the 26-year-old former rookie of the year doesn’t plan on easing into his return, despite coach Jonathan Gannon saying Monday that “we’ve got to be willing to understand that it might not look like Kyler.”

When Gannon echoed those sentiments to his quarterback, Murray said he laughed.

“I understand the thought process, but every time I touch the field, I’m trying to do my thing and that’s obviously win, but do it at a high level,” Murray said. “I understand the thought process behind, ‘Hey, take it slow. Don’t be too hard on yourself,’ because I missed all the reps, I missed all the camp reps. I missed all preseason.

“… I’ve missed all this time, so to go into it thinking that … Like, I hear what he’s saying, but that’s not in my head.”

Despite Murray replicating his football acts as much as possible with senior reconditioning coordinator Buddy Morris, the quarterback said he won’t know how his knee will react until Sunday. Murray said he had been told that the chances of reinjuring his knee start declining after the nine-month mark, and he began feeling better right around then.

“I just kind of knew,” Murray said. “I felt different and, from there, obviously, telling the coaches or whatever, I feel like I can go practice and the window starts and then you just continue to rep and rep and rep, and then from there, I felt good for quite some time now.”

Murray’s indicator that he was ready to begin practicing was when he felt good for consecutive weeks. He said he kept Gannon up to date on his health daily.

“At the end of the day, the end goal was to get back and be me,” Murray said. “So that’s what pushed me every single day. It wasn’t no external factors or motivational deals like that. It has to come within.”

Arizona is 1-13 since Murray was injured, and that desire to help his teammates experience success is part of what is driving Murray now.

“There’s a couple plays a game here or there where we just shoot ourselves in the foot,” Murray said. “We’re really not that far off. Obviously, people may think we’re a bad football team. We’re not a bad football team. We got to clean some things up and we need to make more plays. And that’s what it comes down to, is making plays.”

Murray is set to run an offensive style that he described as “completely different” than anything he’s run since the eighth grade — including new verbiage — but he said he’s comfortable with all of it. He said offensive coordinator Drew Petzing has explained and coached the scheme “really well.”

“I love it, I love it,” Murray said. “I think the [detail] of it, it’s been great for me. So, I’m excited to go out there and execute.”