Arizona Cardinals Dodged Massive Bullet With Christian Wilkins

I, along with many others, were very vocal last offseason that the Arizona Cardinals needed to make a big splash in free agency with some big names hitting the market. Although many big names were available, none were bigger than defensive lineman Christian Wilkins, who was coming off a career-year with the Miami Dolphins.

The former 13th overall pick in 2019 had long been a stud for the Dolphins despite never receiving a Pro Bowl selection (which I wouldn’t have believed you if you had told me before). He was thriving in five seasons in South Beach, playing and starting in every game for three-straight years. His play was rewarded with a massive $110 million deal with the Las Vegas Raiders.

Things didn’t go as planned, however, as Wilkins played just five games before being placed on injured reserve with a foot injury. Wilkins underwent surgery to repair a Jones fracture and has been working back from it ever since.

Or so we thought.

Why Arizona Cardinals Dodged Bullet With Christian Wilkins

As it turns out, Wilkins and the Raiders had disagreements over the way he was approaching the rehab process, which bubbled up and resulted in his release. Now, Wilkins is filing a grievance against the franchise after they moved to void $35.2 million of his guaranteed salary.

It was attention grabbing and set the sports world on fire with everyone stunned by the news, but it did leave a burning question for many fan bases who wanted Wilkins during free agency, including Cardinals fans: Did we dodge a bullet?

This is never an easy question to answer, as there are countless layers to situations like this. If the scenario played out exactly like it did in Sin City then yes, absolutely they avoided disaster. But it’s never that simple.

After all, Wilkins had played/started 51 consecutive games and tallied an astonishing 252 tackles and 17 sacks as a down lineman. For good measure, he forced and recovered four fumbles each. He was a glorified superstar.

The Raiders weren’t wrong for signing him and certainly not for giving him a contract of that size -- at the time. Wilkins had performed to the point where he was worth every penny, and any other teams who pursued him would’ve been happy giving him that money for what he had done.

We know that things didn’t work out with the injury, which is all that matters at the end of the day. But anyone who knows me and follows my content knows that I don’t like predicting/assuming injuries unless a player is truly, and I mean historically, injury prone. Wilkins was not even remotely that, so I would’ve never seen this coming.

I also always ponder whether something like that would've happened somewhere else. After all, we’re talking about a completely different situation -- new teammates, schemes, opponents, etc. So, what caused Wilkins to get injured was never guaranteed if he went to the Cardinals or any of his other contenders.

All this is to say that what happened in Las Vegas is never guaranteed to happen somewhere else. However, it did happen and we can’t play the “what if” game here.

At the end of the day, Wilkins’ contract is one of the worst of the 2020's and every team should be collectively exhaling that they dodged such a massive bullet -- including the Cardinals.