Arizona Cardinals Re-sign P Drew Butler

The punter has been up and down with the Arizona Cardinals in less than two seasons

Before heading out to the Scouting Combine, the Arizona Cardinals re-signed pending restricted free agent punter Drew Butler to a contract extension. Butler, who replaced Dave Zastudil in the 2014 season after he was injured, won the job in camp and many, myself included, didn’t expect him to go the entire season as the team’s fourth down kicker. Still, Butler had some good games (and some terrible ones).

This doesn’t mean the team will not bring in another punter to to challenge Butler in camp later this year, this is fairly common practice for both established punters and place kickers who don’t have complex schemes to learn for the most part. This doesn’t take anything away from what they do, but the nuances of Bruce Arians offense aren’t exactly complex when kicking.

Darren Urban of the team’s official website notes, “Butler only had to punt 60 times last season, averaging 42.9 yards a kick and 35.4 net. He had 22 punts downed inside the 20 and only six touchbacks.” The low number of points was because of the explosiveness of the Arizona Cardinals offense in scoring touchdowns (or turning the ball over at inopportune times).

Contract details were not available at this time officially, but rumors have the deal at 2yrs, 1.2m/yr.