Las Vegas Raiders 2020 NFL Draft prospect profile: Kenneth Murray

Resume and Accolades

As mentioned on the previous slide, Kenneth Murray was a three-year starter with the Oklahoma sooners. He announced himself immediately as an impact player and was named the Big 12 Defensive Freshman of the Year in 2017. The Texas native was named to the All-Big 12 Second-team as a sophomore and ended his career with an All-Big 12 First-team selection as a junior.

Murray was a tackling machine with the Sooners and even more impressively, his tackles for loss statistics increased steadily from 7 to 12.5 and finally to 17 in his final year. Those 17 tackles for loss in 2019 were good enough for 18th in the country and he even finished top three in the country tackles as a sophomore. Of course, tackles are not the end all be all as we saw recently with former Raider LB Tahir Whitehead who racked up the tackles but was a liability in coverage.

That should be much less of a concern with Murray as WalterFootball.com describes him as an “asset for pass coverage…[and] his size and athleticism allows him to have the potential to play some man coverage on tight ends and backs out of the backfield”. Murray performed extremely well at the NFL Combine as he ran a 4.52 second 40, jumped 38 inches in the vertical jump, nailed a 10’2” broad jump, and put up 21 reps on the bench press.

He also measured in at 6’2” and 240lbs so in addition to the speed needed in pass coverage he has the size to not get bullied at the point of attack.

Murray has all of the measurables and has the accolades to match and looks to be quite the prospect for any team lucky enough to select him. If he does end up in Silver and Black, where would he fit in.