Something happened between the Arizona Cardinals and cornerback Patrick Peterson last month, leading to his frustration and a decision not to participate in the voluntary offseason program after first showing up for voluntary workouts. The initial report was that someone in the front office said or did something to upset him.
With news of Peterson’s six-game suspension for violating the league’s performance-enhancing drug policy, the reason for his discontent has come out.
According to Arizona Sports 98.7 FM’s John Gambadoro and later reported by ESPN’s Josh Weinfuss, the situation was about money and the suspension.
Peterson, who has known for months about the suspension, approached general manager Steve Keim about restructuring his contract to give him more cash money now. It would also have effectively reduced the amount of money he loses during his six-game suspension.
Keim told him no.
Peterson will forfeit more than $3.88 million in salary during the six-game suspension.
Had the contract been restructured and an amount of his scheduled $11 million salary been converted into a bonus paid now, the amount he would lose would have been reduced.
For example, the Cardinals, who do not have much salary cap space, could have converted $5 million of his salary into a bonus paid now. It would’ve created $2.5 million more in salary cap space in 2019 and also changed the amount he will lose in the suspension. Instead of losing six weeks of his $11 million salary, he would have lost six weeks of a $6 million salary, which would have come to about $2.1 million.
A restructuring of his deal like this would have also increased Peterson’s cap number by $2.5 million in 2020.
The decision not to rework the deal upset Peterson.
Peterson himself said himself at his charity event Thursday that his relationship with the team is “good,” but according to ESPN’s Weinfuss, there is still “a deep fracture” stemming from what happened.
Peterson has two years remaining on his contract. After requesting a trade last season, he rescinded that demand and even publicly said he wished to be a Cardinal for life. We will now see if this recent sequence of events will change that desire.
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