With the release of Jordan Phillips finally going into effect, the Arizona Cardinals have to address the defensive line.
On March 16th, it was announced that the Arizona Cardinals had released DL Jordan Phillips, and they designated that cut to go into effect on June 1st.
This was done to open up some more cap room for 2022 while pushing some of the dead cap to future years, now a common move in the NFL.
In his two years with the team, Phillips was incredibly underwhelming. Injury problems plagued his time here, and he only played in 18 out of 33 games over those two seasons.
His legacy in Arizona is a grand total of 550 defensive snaps, which produced 33 tackles and five sacks. In contrast, in only seven games, J.J. Watt played 341 snaps and had 16 tackles and a sack.
After such a disappointing career in red, Phillips is now a Buffalo Bill again, and the Cardinals are set to increase their cap space drastically.
Phillips had initially signed a 3-year, $30 million deal with the Cardinals in 2020 and was scheduled to receive $13.3 million in 2022. However, the June 1st designation of his release means only $3.3 million will count against this season’s cap number, and the Cardinals will have $10 million more in cap space than they did yesterday.
OvertheCap.com lists the Cardinals with only $2.59 million, the third least in the NFL as of Wednesday. The new number of $12.5 million would place the team 12th in the league for cap space.
A $10 million injection is some serious cash and should allow the front office to look a bit more seriously at some of the free-agent options who have passed the first few rounds of free agency without finding a new home.
Here are a few options on the free-agent market that might help the Cardinals make up for the loss at the interior defensive line.