With Kliff Kingsbury on the sideline and Kyler Murray leading the huddle against the Detroit Lions in Week 1, the Arizona Cardinals will enter the 2019 NFL season with a relatively rare combination: a 1st-year head coach and a rookie starting QB.
Now, plenty of teams with 1st-year head coaches have played rookie QBs at some point, whether early in the season when a veteran is injured or falters (like last season’s Cardinals), or later in the season as the team enters development mode. But rarely is that the plan—comparatively few teams enter Week 1 with both a 1st-year coach and a rookie starting QB.