Arizona Cardinals: 5 released players to ponder

The Arizona Cardinals will be smart in free agency but it never hurts to make some calls

With free agency quickly approaching, more and more teams are dropping veteran players like yesterday’s garbage.  Some of the issues are money, some health, some age, some a combination of those three.  For the Arizona Cardinals, these aren’t necessarily players they’d be interested in but it doesn’t cost them a dime to make some calls and knock a few doors down.

Here are five players the Cardinals should inquire about this week.  All of the following have been officially released by their former teams, making them available free agents.

Charles Johnson, DE

Johnson is attractive for more than one reason.  After nine seasons with the Carolina Panthers, he was released this past week.  Nine seasons and yet Johnson is still only 29 years old.  The defensive end has a few years left in him.

Johnson has 62 career sacks.  He only had one sack in the 2015 regular season, however he had three sacks in the three playoff games, including one against the Arizona Cardinals in the NFC Championship Game. Because of injury he only played in seven games in 2015.

I don’t think he’ll end up in Arizona.  He is scheduled to visit the Tampa Bay Buccaneers this week.  However I think the Cardinals would be doing themselves a disservice by at least not checking into using his services in 2016.

Next: A replacement for Jermaine Gresham?