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Washington’s off-field situation

The news came out this morning that linebacker Daryl Washington is being investigated in a domestic dispute from Wednesday night. It’s very early in the process — no arrests have been made — and until/unless something else happens, it’s tough to know exactly what direction this will take. In 2010, linebacker Joey Porter was arrested right after he signed with the Cardinals, and that ended up going no further because there wasn’t a case.

“These are serious accusations that we are closely monitoring,” the Cardinals said in a statement. “Until all the facts are determined, and out of respect for the process, we will decline any further comment at this point.”

Washington was just suspended for the first four games of the regular season for violating the league’s substance abuse policy. More legal issues could further impact Washington’s playing time, but again, it is way too early to know if that’s how it is going to play out.

Delving into the first Arians minicamp

The Cardinals are done with the first day of their three-day voluntary minicamp. The tempo for the almost two-hour work in the afternoon was crisp. Coach Bruce Arians said there were fewer mistakes than might have been anticipated. The only player not there was Larry Fitzgerald, but Arians knew that he wouldn’t be and said Fitz would be back on Wednesday. A couple other tidbits:

– T Levi Brown and LB O’Brien Schofield weren’t taking part as they continue their rehab from 2012 injuries. Arians said there was no reason to push it. Schofield should be back soon. Arians just wants to make sure Brown is available by the Fall. Arians said he might consider putting Nate Potter at guard at some point, but there is plenty of time to figure that out. Arians said a player should be able to play either guard or tackle on the same side.

– QB Carson Palmer said 75 percent of the offense has been introduced to the players, although there is a long way to go to make it work in practice. This is the teaching/learning phase, clearly, although the pace of the workout was noticeably quick.

– With Schofield out (and for all we know, even if Schofield was available) it was free agent linebacker Lorenzo Alexander lining up on the outside with Sam Acho. Daryl Washington and Jasper Brinkley were the inside linebackers. The first string secondary was Jerraud Powers with Patrick Peterson at cornerback and Rashad Johnson and Yeremiah Bell at safety.

– Washington obviously won’t be able to play the first four games because of his suspension. Arians said it was too early to know who will be the starter in Washington’s absence. “We will get Daryl ready to start just like I did with Ben Roethlisberger (before his suspension in 2010) and whoever was taking his place in September was more than ready to,” Arians said.

Thoughts on a schedule

So here are some quick thoughts on the Cardinals’ schedule, for what they are worth. No one knows exactly what will happen between now and when the games will be played and so much can change. Nevertheless, this is what we do, so we press on …

– What smacks me in the face first is the back-to-back games against the 49ers — in San Francisco — and the Seahawks just four days later for their NFL Network game. That’s in October (13 and 17). Those teams aren’t easy with which to deal, and to have them so close together is tough. I guess, with Colin Kaepernick and Russell Wilson with similar games (I know Wilson doesn’t run as much as Kaepernick), the defense will be in the right frame of mind. Todd Bowles, are you ready?

– Opening in St. Louis isn’t a bad place to start. The Cards have had a ton of success there, winning seven straight before last year. These aren’t the 2009 Rams, but they aren’t the Niners and Seahawks either.

– Offenses with which the Cards must deal without suspended linebacker Daryl Washington: Rams, Lions, Saints, Buccaneers. All in all, not the worst thing.

– A bye at exactly the midway point of the season.

– The Bruce Arians-faces-his-former-Colts-team game comes Nov. 24. Will be very interesting to see where the Cards are at that point — we will be long past the storybook of the Colts season last year — and, for that matter, where the Colts stand.

– I didn’t think weather would be a big deal, but it could be chilly in Philly (Dec. 1) and Tennessee (Dec. 15). And perhaps Seattle (Dec. 22) for that matter.

– It did catch my eye that the preseason Dallas game is at 1:30 p.m. on Saturday. I prefer that rather than night preseason games.

– A trip to Raymond James Stadium Sept. 29. Let’s see, the last time the Cards were there …

Palmer contract helps Cards

The Cardinals didn’t have to pay much in trade compensation to acquire quarterback Carson Palmer. The new contract he agreed to doesn’t exactly hurt the Cards either.

Both Brian McIntyre and Aaron Wilson broke out the details of Palmer’s new Cards’ deal, the most important detail being that Palmer’s salary cap number is only $4 million in 2013, lower than originally expected but one that fits into Wednesday night’s news of the Cards having about $8.2 million in cap space remaining even after the Palmer trade. (Since the top 51 offseason rules apply to the cap, I’d guess the signings of Curtis Taylor and Bryan McCann didn’t impact the cap at all.)

Turns out Palmer’s two-year deal is technically a three-year contract, helping the cap distribution. It might as well be a two-year deal though, because the third year voids automatically if Palmer is still on the team five days after the Super Bowl next year and if the team wants to cut him, the third year wouldn’t matter anyway. The magic of contract structures.

Anyway, Palmer’s salary of $2 million is guaranteed this season, and he got a $6 million signing bonus. He has an $8 million salary in 2014, with $2 million guaranteed fully, and a cap number of $10 million in 2014.

And here’s a picture of Palmer and Daryl Washington from this morning’s sprints.

Dealing with Washington’s suspension

By the time the Cardinals actually play a game that counts, six months-plus from now, today’s revelation that linebacker Daryl Washington was suspended the first four games of the 2013 regular season will be old news. Even how coach Bruce Arians deals with it will be old news. There is a whole offseason to prep a replacement. The other players know. There’s no sugar-coating that losing arguably your best defensive player (and I said arguably, Patrick, Calais and Darnell) doesn’t help on the field. But on the field is probably the easiest place to work with this absence. By September, by the time games start, this is no different on the field than a guy who suffers a badly sprained ankle and misses a month. It happens.

(A quick aside: I don’t know who the Cards will get to fill the role. Early guess is the team makes due with what they have as opposed to getting a “name” fill-in. Karlos Dansby’s name has been mentioned often, and I suppose you can’t rule it out, but what to do with him when Washington comes back? Is Dansby ready to be a backup? I’d guess no right now and that’s assuming he’d be willing to come in for cheap.)

But Washington won’t be allowed at the facility for that month (or five weeks if the Cards are unlucky enough to have an early bye) and misses out on that time with his team and coaches. He’ll lose $564,705 in salary based on the $2.4 million he is supposed to earn this season. Based on the NFL’s policy, the only way Washington could get suspended is if he had violated the policy previously, so Washington also has to show he can get straight in that regard. To be suspended a player is in Stage Two of the league’s Substance Abuse policy and stays there for two full seasons. Another longer suspension comes if he violates the policy again.

UPDATE: This was not a violation for performance-enhancing drugs. People seem to be missing that point.

Washington, who signed a huge new contract last season, was due a $10 million option bonus at the end of the season but Mike Sando reports that bonus was moved last month to the end of the 2014 season (Apparently for salary cap purposes). Either way, the Cardinals still have a very talented player who they want on the field, and they are paying him to be there. Washington promised, both in a statement through the team and via his Twitter account he was sorry.

I apologize to all my fans, teammates and to the Cardinals Organization. I promise to work even harder and to not let you guys down anymore.—
Daryl Washington (@DWashington58) April 03, 2013

The Cards need Washington to be true to his word.

Winning free agency

The first afternoon of free agency is winding down. Twitter and the constant flow of information around the league is pushed everyone to the edge, it seems. To this I’m just making the point — it’s just March, and it’s just the first few hours.

(Here’s a post that’s sure to get everyone riled up at the end of the day.)

“Winning” March doesn’t mean you will win later. Can it help? Sure. But there’s no way to know now and certainly no reason to grade it out, good or bad, right now. Other than a couple of spots — like say, quarterback — what players will be the main ones talked about at the outset of camp? The ones who will have the heaviest influence on the season? Patrick Peterson. Larry Fitzgerald. Calais Campbell. Daryl Washington. The team’s best players, and the ones who are already here.

Every single player on the market has flaws. That’s why they are on the market. That too often seems to get lost in this discussion. I’m happy for Greg Toler if the reports are true he got $15 million for three years. He went to tiny Saint Paul’s, he worked a JC Penney’s for a while, for goodness sake. Today’s payday is the American dream on HGH. But with all due respect to Greg, a good person and a hard worker, did I see him as a $5M a year cornerback? No. And when Peterson’s deal has to be extended in a year or so, if Toler is making $5M, what would Peterson need to get?

The ebb and flow of emotions about this player and that player seem to happen in a vacuum too often. These are intricate puzzles being put together with talent, personalities, money and age all factored in. Every team must do it. They have to do it in the way they think is best. I have no idea how the team of Steve Keim and Bruce Arians will fare putting together this team. I’m not saying the Cards — like every team — haven’t made mistakes. But goodness, we are, as of this writing, less than five hours into free agency, weeks before the draft, and some insist Keim is a terrible GM. After, what, 63 days on the job? Not sure how you make that leap.

Heck, I’m writing this at 5:30 and by 7, there could be all kinds of news breaking about the Cards agreeing to deals. Who knows. If the Cards win in the fall, no one will remember or care about March. If they lose, no one will talk about March either. There will be other pressing business.

Keim considers inevitable difficult decisions

Are some difficult decisions coming with the roster for general manager Steve Keim?

“Absolutely,” Keim said.

In itself, that is no surprise. There are the reports the Cards are currently about $3.5 million over the salary cap (teams must be compliant by March 12) but that in itself isn’t a big deal. Contracts can easily enough be manipulated to make it work, especially that close to being OK. For instance, the Cards could work it just by, for example, releasing Kevin Kolb, because while Kolb will still count for $6 million of “dead” cap space if cut, his cap number currently is $13.5M so there would be a $7.5M savings on the cap alone. (Again, I expect the Cards to try and work out a new deal for Kolb, so if he came back, that too will clear space.)

But it’s the “tough” part of the tough decisions that Keim is considering that impacts the equation.

“Anytime you get attached to certain players it’s not only a tough decision from a business standpoint, but it’s a tough decision from a personal standpoint,” Keim said. “But you have to put personal feelings aside, and you have to do what’s best for the organization. But there are going to be some tough decisions, but at the same time, there will be some decisions we are excited about moving forward. Put young players in a position to grow and succeed.”

Keim, obviously, isn’t naming names right now. The first connect-the-dots that pops into your head when thinking about this is veteran safety Adrian Wilson, who carries a $5.4M cap number in 2013 and who himself wondered at the end of last season if his days in Arizona might be coming to an end. There is no player Keim is closer to than Wilson, after both attended North Carolina State and Keim was the one who scouted and pushed for Wilson in the 2001 draft.

As of now, the Cardinals have 10 players scheduled to have salary cap numbers in 2013 of at least $5M: Kolb, Larry Fitzgerald ($10.3), Calais Campbell ($8.8), Darnell Dockett ($7.7), Daryn Colledge ($7.3), Stewart Bradley ($6.5), Levi Brown ($6.4), Kerry Rhodes ($6.0), Wilson and Daryl Washington ($5.4). There are a host of moves any team can make, including extensions — for instance, with Rhodes, who is down to the final year of his deal — that can lower the cap number too.

But this is about more than just money and cap space. It factors in a new coaching staff, a new general manager, a team that went 5-11 and the reality rosters sometimes are purged in such a transition.

“Anytime you are in a position where you are dealing with the salary cap, you have some tough challenges financially, but at the same time, starting with (president) Michael Bidwill giving us the opportunity to do what is necessary to win, we won’t make decisions solely based on finances,” Keim said.  “Now, what is hard in this business is that you have players making quite a bit of money and their production level doesn’t match their financial package.

“Those are the decisions where we’ll weigh the pros and the cons and make the tough decisions based on what are we getting out of this player. Does he schematically fit what we do? Are his finances in line for what we are getting from him?”

Work to do on the linebacking lineup

With the news, reported multiple places, that the Cards are a little more than $3 million over the salary cap about a month away from needing to get in compliance, general manager Steve Keim still has some maneuvering to do. Knowing now that new defensive coordinator Todd Bowles is sticking with the 3-4 base defense, the linebacker corps remains a crucial part of the equation.

What that means going forward is the question as free agency/cap compliance/the offseason gets closer.

Daryl Washington, the Pro Bowler and burgeoning star, isn’t going anywhere. He got his new contract last year and is the cornerstone of the position. But beyond that? The biggest part of the to-do list is got to be the other inside linebacker spot next to Washington. Paris Lenon is an unrestricted free agent, but he is also going to turn 36 in November. With a new staff, those are often the kind of players that are left to move on, or brought back later in the offseason. But Lenon has been playing, which in Stewart Bradley’s two Cardinals’ seasons hasn’t been the case. Bradley took a reduction in salary last season of 50 percent and still didn’t play much on defense at all, relegated to mostly special teams. Again, that could change with a new defensive coordinator, but up against the cap and with Bradley owning a $6.5 million salary cap number for 2013, his return under that deal doesn’t make sense. At best, renegotiation/pay cut would be coming, although the Cards may just part ways. UPDATE: I’m not sure why I forgot to mention Reggie Walker, who played solidly this season. Walker is under contract for another season and surpassed Bradley on the depth chart.

(That’s the dangerous part of this process, however. Bradley would still cost $3M of dead cap space if released, which is still a savings of $3.5M, but it’s not like it’s zero impact. The cap hit has always got to be considered with moving on from any player or trading him. Sometimes it can be spread out over a couple of years, but it’s still a hit of worthless space.)

O’Brien Schofield and Sam Acho, your outside starters, still have to prove themselves to the new staff too, although the decision to go with a 3-4 base helps both tremendously. They might have a much harder time in a 4-3 setup finding a place to play.

After all that, Fitzgerald makes another Pro Bowl

It wasn’t Larry Fitzgerald’s finest year in the NFL — not with 71 catches, 798 yards and four touchdowns, all well below his regular output — but his reputation around the league has always been good. So it wasn’t a shock to see that Fitzgerald was still an alternate for the Pro Bowl when those announcements came out at the end of the season. And, with the many players who end up missing the Pro Bowl, it wasn’t a shock to see Tuesday that Fitz will once again be a Pro Bowler, replacing Chicago’s Brandon Marshall. Marshall reportedly needs hip surgery, and he becomes the second Pro Bowl wideout to have to give up his spot because of health reasons (Detroit’s Calvin Johnson is the other.) Tampa’s Vincent Jackson replaced Johnson. The other NFC receivers are Atlanta’s Julio Jones and the Giants’ Victor Cruz.

It will be Fitzgerald’s seventh Pro Bowl in nine NFL seasons. He joins fellow Cardinals Patrick Peterson and Daryl Washington in Hawaii.

The berth will give Fitzgerald a chance to extend his NFL record of career touchdown receptions in the league’s all-star game. Fitzgerald already has seven TD catches. Last year, he had six catches for 111 yards and three scores.

Niners win puts Washington in the Pro Bowl

When the Pro Bowl teams were announced at the end of the regular season, linebacker Daryl Washington admittedly was disappointed he wasn’t chosen. Today, he ended up going to Hawaii anyway.

With the 49ers winning the NFC Championship and going to the Super Bowl, Washington officially was elevated to the Pro Bowl roster as a replacement for 49ers linebacker NaVorro Bowman. It was Bowman and fellow 49ers linebacker Patrick Willis with whom Washington battled all season as a potential Pro Bowler. Now, Washington gets his first shot in his third season.

Washington is the first Cardinals linebacker to make the Pro Bowl since Seth Joyner did it back in 1994. He’s the first Cards’ inside linebacker to get to the Pro Bowl since E.J. Junior in 1985. Washington had 140 tackles this season — 110 of them of the solo variety — with nine sacks, 14 tackles for loss, two forced fumbles, one interception, a fumble recovery and six passes defensed.

The Pro Bowl will be televised on NBC a week from today, at 5 p.m. Arizona time. Washington joins teammate Patrick Peterson as the lone Cardinals in the Pro Bowl.