Former NFL coach Rex Ryan has been one of the Arizona Cardinals’ biggest critics.

But the Kliff Kingsbury-Kyler Murray combo appears to slowly be winning over the current ESPN analyst, at least a little bit.

Ryan, who slammed Kingsbury’s system last season, sang a much different tune on Monday.

He raved about quarterback Kyler Murray on ESPN’s Get Up.

“He protects himself,” Ryan said on the show. “I’ve never seen a guy take less hits. As soon as he scrambles, don’t worry about it Arizona Cardinals fans, he’s not going to get hurt. He does not get touched. He either slides on the ground as a great baseball player, he gets out of bounds or he sticks it in the end zone. You are not touching him. Remember in college, we said, ‘this kid never gets tackled.’ Now he’s not even getting touched. To me, I’ve seen this one other time when I think about all these players. I think it’s Michael Vick but he throws the ball better. To me, that was it, the way Vick burst onto the scene, that’s the way this kid is now.”

Those comments are very different from comments Ryan made before the Cardinals faced the Detroit Lions in the first game of the 2019 season.

The former New York Jets and Buffalo Bills coach called the Cardinals’ system “boring” while saying the team would get “whipped” in their Week 1 game against the Detroit Lions last season (the game ended in a tie).

“Basketball on grass. It’s so boring watching all this stuff right there,” Ryan said at the time. “Come on, college football. I hope it gets smoked, also. I really do, because I think it’s so boring…. Kingsbury says ‘wait till Week 1.’ Oh, I can’t wait to see Week 1.”

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He continued: “They’re going to get whipped Week 1. Look, this guy … everyone talks about this great offense and all that. Yeah, if it’s fantasy football and you want points yardage, that’s great. How about wins?

“Kingsbury, let’s face it, had the best player in our league [at Texas Tech], he was 13-16 with Pat Mahomes at quarterback. How about you worry about wins?”

Ryan also said at that time that he thought opposing defenses would be able to shut down Murray and the Cardinals’ offense.

“That open-edge pressure, you’re going to see it all day long,” he said. “Teams are going to keep doing it. Their answer is the quick, little hits, screen or slant. Well, guess what? The DBs are going to know that. They’re going to be sitting on these guys, they’re going to challenge them, get in the face of these receivers, and they’re in for a long season. They better get that running game going, or they’re gonna get run out of town.”

The Cardinals used the clip from Ryan in a hype video before the 2020 season, apparently using Ryan’s comments, and others made by some critics of the team, as motivation for this year.

Ryan’s remarks about Murray weren’t the only recent compliment he had for the Cardinals.

On Sunday, he apparently praised Kingsbury for Larry Fitzgerald’s late in the first half of Week 1 that allowed Arizona to get a big field goal in the win against the San Francisco 49ers.

Ryan wasn’t the only one who had praise for Murray on Get Up.

Former NFL QB and ESPN analyst Dan Orlovsky said this of the QB:

 “I say this, there are quarterbacks who can beat you with their arm, who can beat you with their legs and beat you with your mind. He can beat you three ways,” Orlovsky said. “He’s phenomenal throwing the ball, he’s one of the best athletes in the NFL and he’s really developed his understanding of the game. He’s a top five player that teams don’t want to play against in the NFL. He’s added this patience to his game, he has incredible awareness, he’s added DeAndre Hopkins. You saw real quickly, a comfort and a growth between him and DeAndre Hopkins. He’s an amazing scrambler.”

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