Sixteen NFL teams saw their season end on Sunday and the LA Chargers were not one of them. With the end of the regular season will also come the end of many NFL careers, some of which started with the Chargers.
With the Dallas Cowboys missing the playoffs, 2020 first-round pick Kenneth Murray finds himself searching for what's next. While it would be shocking for a 27-year-old former first-round pick to be forced out of the league in a vacuum, Murray had made his own bed for multiple NFL teams.
There still may be a team out there that is willing to take a chance on Murray because of his first-round draft priors. It's almost guaranteed that he will at least get a training camp invite from a linebacker-hungry team. But just six years after being taken by the Chargers in the first round, it's safe to say that Murray won't be a starter in the NFL anymore.
Kenneth Murray likely just played his last NFL game as a starter
That's not to say Murray won't ever get a spot start in the NFL again if there is a team dealing with a litany of injuries. But after six bad years with three different teams, the league has seen enough to not deploy Murray as a starting linebacker in 2026 and beyond.
Dallas traded inconsequential draft capital for Murray this past offseason after a disappointing season with the Tennesse Titans. Tennessee signed Murray to an overpriced two-year deal, proving they didn't actually watch any film on the Chargers linebacker.
Murray carried his poor play with him from Los Angeles to Tennessee but the Cowboys didn't seem to mind. They tried to become the team to crack Murray's potential but ultimately failed. Mixed with defensive coordinator Matt Eberflus, Murray had arguably the worst year of his career.
No team in its right mind will sign Murray to start again as the Titans did. And depending on how free agency and the NFL Draft shake out, there might not even be a spot on an NFL roster for Murray.
Murray will ultimately go down as one of the worst first-round picks in recent Chargers history. The pick alone would have been bad enough, but it was made worse by the fact the Chargers traded back into the first round to draft him.
At least Justin Herbert was taken in the same draft. If not, that 2020 draft class would go down as a truly awful draft class.