Arizona Cardinals: Flying Around the Round Table

Dec. 16, 2012; Glendale, AZ, USA; Detroit Lions running back Mikel Leshoure (25) is tackled by Arizona Cardinals strong safety Adrian Wilson (24) during the first half at University of Phoenix Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Matt Kartozian-USA TODAY Sports

The Arizona Cardinals had a fantastic offseason, but they couldn’t keep everyone.

Fan favorites Paris Lenon and Adrian Wilson were two players who left Arizona for other teams, and there were other former Cardinals who will be donning another uniform this fall. The Cardinals added some great players and have every Cardinals fan excited for the upcoming season, but the team added 46 players (only 53 can be kept on the roster).

As a result, Wilson, Lenon and other players were let go of.

Which loss will hurt the most? To answer that question, we went around the round table and asked our staff to answer this question. Here are the responses.

Adam Cooper

Adrian Wilson is the player whose loss will impact the Cardinals the most. He won’t be particularly missed on the field, however. I think the specific area the Cards will feel a void will be in the locker room. He had always been one of the few true leaders on the team that would always try to teach as much as he could to the young ones and smack them back down to earth when they developed a big head. There aren’t many men that can replace a leader like him.

Brenton Johnson

Brenton wrote an article about this, and it will go up later today. Here’s an excerpt from his article.

On the surface this would seem to be a very difficult question to answer because of the extremely successful free agent signings this year, as the Arizona Cardinals had probably and potentially the most successful and aggressive free agency in recent memory.    However, having said that, as I thought this through, there is only one name that I could not stop thinking about and must be the departure that will hurt the most.

Earl Burnett

I don’t think any of the departures will hurt them. They made up for it in draft and by bringing in veteran Bell and depth behind him. I really think they are better, and there was no departure worth speaking of.

Baily Deeter

The Cardinals won’t suffer much from any of these losses, but the loss of Adrian Wilson will hurt the most. I think they were able to replace him on the field with Yeremiah Bell and Tyrann Mathieu, but his leadership will be missed. Expect the Cardinals to suffer from his loss off the field, especially with all of the new pieces.