The Cardinals want to keep safety Tony Jefferson. They want to keep defensive tackle Calais Campbell. Whether they can is to be determined, with the free agent "tampering" period beginning March 7 and official free agency starting March 9.
"I've always been adamant about not negotiating through the media," Cardinals GM Steve Keim said Friday during the "Doug and Wolf" show on Arizona Sports. "But we have been, in my opinion, very aggressive with trying to re-sign the players we would like to have back. As we get closer to free agency, some players would prefer to test the market. We understand. It's a business. But when you find guys who are core players, who you want to move forward with, you have to try to be active and aggressive and try to re-sign them."
Will it matter? Matt Miller, an NFL writer who has had friendly interactions with Jefferson on Twitter before, tweeted Friday that Jefferson is expected to hit the free-agent market and garner offers at $7 million a season. The news has been a lot quieter around Campbell, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything either way.
The key part to this is that it is Feb. 17. That's an eternity before March 9 in this context. Talks with everything tend to ramp up before a deadline, and we're just too far from a deadline right now. It's also good to note that Jefferson getting that nugget out there helps his leverage, much like the Cardinals continuing to point out they will franchise tag Chandler Jones if a deal cannot be reached with him.
(Keim said the team has had "great dialogue with Chandler" so perhaps a long-term deal isn't out of the question quite yet.)
Still, this comes down to reality, and the reality has always been that the Cardinals have been longshots to retain Jones, Jefferson and Campbell.
"You can't have everybody back," Keim said. "The way the salary cap is situated, you have to make some tough decisions. You have to make some tough decisions based on what the salary is, their age, their injury history. So many things go into it. That's the tough part of the business, because we all get emotionally attached to these guys."
