Arizona Cardinals fans can blame Steve Keim for Hopkins fiasco

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Steve Keims’ legacy with the Arizona Cardinals is about as dark as most of the executives who came before him in the desert.

Now that the Arizona Cardinals have finally moved on from DeAndre Hopkins, it has come in the form of a release rather than a trade. This decision doesn’t sit well with more than a few fans, but in the end, it was inevitable.

It soon became apparent that general manager Monti Ossenfort was not going to get the deal he wanted for Hopkins. Not with the size of the contract, the star receiver signed an extension in September 2020, which carried an AAV of $27.25 million.

At that time, no one was giving up much of the compensation to take on the Hopkins contract, and that’s something you can thank Steve Keim for, instead of castigating Ossenfort for only getting an 8.1 million dollars in cap savings and a dead cap of $22.6. million thanks to the release of receptors.

Of course, Ossenfort might have traded the star receiver for a pair of Day 3 picks. That would have been something, right? That’s true, but the thing is, the Cards have 10 picks next season, so freeing up cap space, even with the huge success of the dead cap, made more sense right now.

After the NFL Draft, it became apparent that Ossenfort was not going to get the deal he wanted for Hopkins. Yet, in the end, it made more sense to just forfeit the contract, take the entire $22.6 million dead cap (something they can more than afford this season) as opposed to the 11, $3 million hit in 2023 and 2024 if he had waited a few more days.

This strategy frees Ossenfort and the Arizona Cardinals from the burden Keim placed on them thanks to the fact that he signed Hopkins, then 28, to an extension that could have kept him in the desert until after the season. 2024.

For many, extending Hopkins to this megadeal seemed good in anticipation. In my mind, it was a bad deal all along. Hopkins was 28 at the time, the age when players could threaten to back down at any time.

So for me, signing Hopkins for such an extension was a risky business, because it could have kept him until he was 32. And with such a high AAV for a player over 30, there was unnecessary risk everywhere, something Steve Keim did way too much throughout his career as Arizona Cardinals general manager.

While it’s true that Hopkins wanted to be paid top dollar at the time, the potential risk far outweighed the potential reward, even in anticipation. Moral to the story? You’re not trading for a 28-year-old and signing him to a mega expansion that could have kept him for five seasons, with such a high AAV.

It’s not on Ossenfort. It’s on Keim. And it was an unfortunate decision the second the former general manager made the deal with Hopkins.

Must read!. The Cardinals succeed with the release of Hopkins. The Cardinals succeed with the release of Hopkins. dark

Source: Cardinals release DeAndre Hopkins a product of his contract situation by Tyler Drake, ArizonaSports.com

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