The Athletics tried to sweeten their deal with Kyler Murray for him to be on the diamond this season, but the move wasn't enough.
According to Sports Illustrated, a source close with the family said the A's visited Murray in January to sway him from entering the NFL Draft and to stick with baseball.
The team added $14 million in guaranteed money on top of his signing bonus. However, the move wasn't enough, and Murray is predicted by some to go No. 1 overall in the draft next week.
The report added that for the A's to be able to give him that guaranteed money, they would have to add him to the 40-man roster, but it would have paid out similarly to a top-10 NFL draft pick.
Murray has been put on the spot for months about his commitment to playing football, with many NFL scouts noting he technically is on the Athletics. However, Murray tweeted in February he fully has committed to football.
His father, Kevin, cited how Murray was drafted by Oakland in June 2018, yet still played for Oklahoma last season, even though he risked injury and didn't get paid.
“Ninety-six percent of kids who just signed a $4.6 million deal to play baseball wouldn’t have been on no football field the following fall,” Kevin Murray said. “How can people question his love for the game?”
With the likelihood Murray will be signed to an NFL team in the near future, he now has to pay back $1.29 million of the $1.5 million the Athletics have paid him already and forfeit the remaining $3.16 million of that offer.
Murray said it would be different if he was projected to be a third-round NFL pick or lower, saying it "wouldn't be smart" for him to give up being a first-round MLB pick if he was in that position.
But he's not in that position, and he likely will become the first player drafted in the first round of both the NFL and MLB drafts. This unique position made him dig deep and figure out what he truly wants.
“As a kid my whole dream was to win Super Bowls and play QB in the NFL,” Murray said. “For me it was always football. But at the same time it wasn’t.”