SEATTLE — As he prepares for this week’s NFL Scouting Combine, Washington cornerback Byron Murphy is motivated by goals both practical and emotional, and by the pursuit of achievements both fleeting and enduring.
Yes, he would like to run in the low 4.4s in the 40-yard dash; that’s an objective that has occupied much of his time in recent days at the EXOS training center in his native Phoenix, where he’s been working out since Washington’s season ended. Murphy has bulked up — he says he’s gained 12 pounds — and would like to maintain his current weight of 188 when he steps on the scale in Indianapolis. And while he doesn’t worry too much about which team might select him, or about where in the first round he might be taken, he is clear about this much: “I definitely want to be the first cornerback taken off the board. I don’t care if that’s fourth (overall), fifth, sixth, whatever, I just want to be the best corner off the board. That’s always been my goal.”
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It also represents a means to an end, and not just for himself. As Murphy prepares for his NFL career, he also must prepare for the accompanying wealth, and how he can use his pending riches to improve the lives of those who helped him get here.
Like his mother, who always made sure he had a ride to practices and games.
“The first thing I want to do for my mom is get her a nice house,” Murphy said, “wherever she wants to go.”
And his grandmother, Ruby, who helped raise him when his father wasn’t around. High on his list, Murphy said, is “(getting) her out of those apartments that she’s been in since I was a kid.”
And then there is the curly-haired boy who changed Murphy’s life. His name is Malakai, and he just turned 2. He is Murphy’s son and “the biggest blessing of my life,” Murphy says. “Everything I do is for him.”
In some ways, it still seems as if Murphy just got to Washington, as if his college career ended before it ever reached its zenith. He played in only 20 games for the Huskies. He redshirted as a true freshman in 2016 before earning a starting cornerback spot in 2017, only to miss half the season because of a foot injury sustained in practice. But he was so effective in the six games he played — he made two interceptions in his college debut, against Rutgers, and grabbed a third against Penn State in the Fiesta Bowl — that it already was obvious he wouldn’t be long for college football.
Still, he had played so little that he knew he had something to prove in 2018, even as his name began circulating as a potential first-round pick.
“My first year playing, I got hurt, so it kind of set me back,” Murphy said. “After that, I knew I had a chance (to be drafted early), but at the same time, I had to stay focused, keep working on my technique and footwork, and keep learning new stuff about the game that I didn’t know. I knew I had it in me. After this last season, I felt like my game just really showed everybody what I was capable of doing.”
While Murphy’s ball skills might be his biggest selling point, he’s not afraid to come up and deliver a blow against the run. (Jennifer Buchanan / USA TODAY Sports)Indeed, Murphy was hard to miss, even if his listed size of 5 feet 11 and 182 pounds doesn’t exactly scream “first-round corner!” He plays bigger than that, never afraid to stick his nose into a pile or bury his shoulder into the chest of an unsuspecting wide receiver (read: Britain Covey, Utah). But what makes him special as an NFL prospect are his ball skills and football instincts, combined with the high-level athleticism that made him a two-way star at Scottsdale (Ariz.) Saguaro.
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Saguaro coach Jason Mohns could see it before Murphy even joined his program. Mohns recalls a 2013 game against Tempe’s Marcos de Niza High, where Murphy played as a sophomore. He was teammates then with N’Keal Harry, the star Arizona State receiver who, like his close friend Murphy, currently is preparing for the draft.
Harry was at receiver and Murphy at cornerback. Saguaro won 46-36, but Mohns remembers walking off the field thinking, “If that team played both those dudes on both sides of the ball, we probably wouldn’t beat them.”
Shortly after the season, Marcos de Niza’s coach resigned, and Murphy and Harry transferred. Harry wound up at nearby Chandler, where he became the top-rated recruit in the state. Murphy landed at Saguaro, where Mohns played him at corner and receiver. He was elite at both, catching 88 passes for 1,733 yards and 21 touchdowns as a senior while also snagging seven interceptions.
“He could have played basketball, wide receiver or defensive back at the Division I level,” Mohns said. “He was just an instinctual football player with the best ball skills I’ve ever seen — uncanny ability to track the ball, natural pass-catching skills, just really fluid hips, quick feet. You could really see the basketball background.”
Jimmy Lake, Washington’s co-defensive coordinator and secondary coach, first saw Murphy in person during a spring practice before his junior season.
“It was the best ball skills I’ve ever seen,” Lake said. “He was playing wide receiver, he was playing corner, plucking the ball out of the air like he was catching footballs since he was 2 years old. It was very, very impressive.
“It’s not like he’s trying to work for the catch. It just glides. It’s like poetry. A lot of guys don’t catch the ball naturally — like myself and maybe a lot of people, it takes a lot of work to try to secure the football. With him, it’s just effortless, and you’ve probably seen that with a few of the interceptions he’s had over the last couple years.”
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Much as he enjoyed catching touchdown passes, Murphy projected best as a defensive back at the next level. A consensus top-100 national recruit, Murphy received strong interest from USC, Texas A&M, hometown Arizona State and many others. There was a time when Murphy, Harry and pal Chase Lucas, another four-star athlete who starred at Chandler, considered choosing the same college — Murphy once described him and Harry as “a package deal” — so when Harry and Lucas both chose ASU, speculation mounted about whether Murphy might join them.
And it didn’t end when Murphy announced his commitment to Washington on Jan. 21, 2016, two weeks before National Signing Day.
“We had a coach show up at 3 a.m. at the door the night before,” said Murphy’s mother, Shannon Strickland. “They were not stopping. They wouldn’t let go. They had his head a little confused. He was sick. He wasn’t sleeping. He couldn’t focus at school. It was a horrible experience, to be honest. I just prayed and kept telling God to please direct him to where he needs to be. I knew in my heart the whole time it was UW, but he needed to feel it.
Murphy (left) is good friends with N’Keal Harry (right), who was a high school teammate, then a prep and college rival. (Courtesy of Shannon Strickland)“When you walk in as a mother and you do all these official visits and meet all these coaches, a lot of them say the same thing, and it’s repetitive and kind of gets old. Who is the character? Who’s telling the truth here? Who cares about him? Who’s telling me anything I want to hear just to get them in the school? The difference between every coach I met and Coach Lake and Coach Petersen was so far off the charts. There was no confusion for me.”
Deep down, Murphy knew where he belonged, too, even as others worked to sway him until the moment he put pen to paper.
How close was he to staying home instead of playing for the Huskies?
“I signed for two schools,” Strickland said. “I had surgery and couldn’t go to his announcement. I told him, ‘You know what to do. God will tell you what to do.’ ”
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Ultimately, Murphy’s relationship with Lake won out.
“I felt like he was the best coach on the field and off the field, him and Coach Pete,” Murphy said. “He’s one of the best DB coaches in the nation, I think, and having a head coach like Coach Pete being a good guy on and off the field … I kind of wanted to do something new, have a new experience, and I felt like that was the best place for me.”
In hindsight, Murphy’s decision to leave home marked the beginning of a transformation — from immature teenager to a development-minded adult — that continues to this day.
“It would have been a lot easier to go to Arizona State,” Mohns said. “When he really took a step back, I think he realized that getting out and getting away from some of the people around him and getting out of his comfort zone is what he really needed to do to grow up. Coach Petersen runs a true program. Coach Lake, I think, is the best in the country at developing defensive backs, and a good man and good role model. If he was going to be successful and have the opportunity to do what he’s getting ready to do, that was the place he needed to go.”
And the place he needed to stay, even as life got more complicated.
Before he even participated in his first practice at Washington, Murphy learned he was going to be a father.
The news came as a surprise, and he wasn’t exactly sure how to proceed. Alex, Malakai’s mother, lives in Arizona, and Murphy didn’t want to be away from his newborn child. Maybe, he thought, ASU really was the best option now, and he considered transferring home to be with his family.
“I sat down and talked to my mom,” Murphy said. “I was like, ‘Mom, should I go back to Arizona? What should I do?’ She said, ‘You already made the decision. You’ve got to stick with it. Everything else will fall into place.’ ”
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Difficult as she knew it would be for Murphy to focus on school and football knowing his son would be in Arizona, Strickland said, “I told him that’s not a good enough reason, and you need to figure it out in your heart. Somehow, he did it. He did the right thing.”
Murphy’s pick-six was the decisive play in the Huskies’ win against Utah in the Pac-12 title game; it was one of his seven career interceptions. (Kelley L. Cox / USA TODAY Sports)It wasn’t easy. Complicating matters was that UW was so loaded at cornerback — Sidney Jones and Kevin King were second-round picks following the 2016 season — that Murphy wound up redshirting. For a guy who played both offense and defense and rarely came off the field as a high school senior, the idea of sitting out an entire season wasn’t particularly appealing.
But that, too, turned out to be a blessing. Murphy spent the year getting stronger and learning from Jones and King, and his mom moved to the area to be closer to him, which helped. “It was the best,” he said, “because I got home-cooked meals, and I didn’t have to pay for rent, that type of thing.”
After his son was born, Murphy kept in touch with him via FaceTime, and Alex would bring him to Seattle every few weekends to visit. She also took him to Huskies games.
“Those late nights thinking about having a son were still shocking to me,” Murphy said. “I was so young at the time, trying to figure everything out. I just got to the University of Washington, thinking about (how) now I’ve got to go back home so I can support them. But the best thing for me was to stay positive throughout the whole thing, thinking about everything, who I’m doing it for. It was a very stressful thing.”
He spends far more time with his son now that he’s living in the Phoenix area while he trains, and he looks forward to having him by his side as he begins his NFL career.
“Everything I do, he does,” Murphy said. “Every time I’m around him, chilling, playing Fortnite, he grabs a controller.”
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On draft day, Murphy said, “I want to have the same suit as him, everything.”
Murphy’s mom sees it, too.
“They’re twins as babies,” Strickland said. “They’re literally twins. Their attitude, the way they look, everything — they’re twins.”
The 2018 season solidified Murphy’s status as one of the top cornerbacks in the draft class. He stayed healthy and started every game, finishing with four interceptions and earning first-team All-Pac-12 honors, as well as first- or second-team All-America recognition from six outlets. His 66-yard interception return for a touchdown in the Pac-12 Championship Game — the decisive score in a 10-3 victory against Utah — earned him game MVP honors.
It seemed a foregone conclusion, then, that Murphy would bypass his final two years of eligibility to enter the draft. He received a second-round grade from the NFL College Advisory Committee, though many mock drafts project him as a first-rounder. The Athletic draft analyst Dane Brugler ranks Murphy as the No. 2 cornerback in the draft, behind only LSU’s Greedy Williams, and earlier this month projected Murphy as the No. 20 overall pick.
Spotrac.com data shows that the projected total value of a four-year rookie contract at that draft position is a little more than $12.5 million, including a guaranteed signing bonus north of $7.5 million.
After UW’s 28-23 loss to Ohio State in the Rose Bowl, Murphy traveled to Arizona and made his decision to turn pro. After he called his mother, who still lives in the Seattle area, he called Lake, then Petersen. Both coaches supported his decision, he said, and told him, “If I was your father, I’d tell you to do the same thing.”
The family celebrated Malakai’s second birthday a couple of weeks ago, at a children’s play-place in the Phoenix area. “He loves running around,” Murphy said. “He’s wild.”
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That day, Murphy posted an Instagram photo of Malakai sitting in the driver’s seat of an electronic children’s car — think Power Wheels, luxury edition — and joked that his son “got 2 foreign cars before me.”
These are the moments those close to Murphy admire most about his current station in life. He is on the cusp of becoming a first-round pick, but that’s not the most important aspect of what he has become. Mohns recalls Murphy as immature when he arrived at Saguaro, a teen who did just enough to get by in the classroom but not much more. After Murphy’s first quarter of classes at Washington, Petersen sent Mohns a letter. He wanted to let him know that Murphy had posted a 3.5 grade-point average.
Having a son, Mohns said, forced Murphy to grow up even faster.
“He stepped up,” Mohns said. “It would be easy for him to say, ‘Hey, I’m going out of state,’ and to not really be there, but he’s really taken pride in being a good dad and being a part of his son’s life.”
It’s about more than just football for Murphy now. Above all else, he wants to take care of his son, and to show his appreciation to those who took care of him.
“He’s a whole different human being in these years he’s been at UW,” Strickland said. “It’s a night-and-day difference in just these couple years. He’s speaking differently and he’s behaving differently, and acting much more like a grown man.”
The Athletic’s Pete Sampson contributed to this report.
(Top photo by Mark J. Rebilas / USA TODAY Sports)
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