Burns: My hunch on where Rolle ends up
Nothing like a tweet from Chad Ochocinco to set my mind at ease.
Alright, I’m mostly kidding. Mostly. I’ve got confidence (not a lot but enough) that the Cardinals are going to bring back their soon-to-be-free-agent safety Antrel Rolle. A feeling that was validated (not a full-on validation but enough of one) by the Bengals wide receiver.
Monday the NFL’s resident narcissist chimed in on the Rolle debate with this nugget of twitter wisdom from his faux news network:
OCNN NEWS- Antrell Rolle to be released by Cards between now n Friday, he will test the market but wants to be a CARDINAL.
Yeah, I retweeted that one.
The latest round of stories suggest that the Cards are doing everything they can to restructure his deal before they have to release him later this week but that Rolle is determined to determine his worth on the market. And I can’t blame him for that; there is no incentive for him not to sniff around. But despite that determination, the Cardinals seem unusually cool about it.
I’ve talked to GM Rod Graves twice in the last 10 days and during each conversation I was struck by how confident, borderline supremely confident, he sounded in the team’s ability to bring Rolle back. As if he knows….
A. The market won’t yield the money Rolle thinks it will
B. Rolle really wants to be an Arizona Cardinal and is just doing his homework or
C. The Cardinals are financially committed to making Rolle the best offer when all is said and done.
The Cards are in a weird spot on this one. They’ve already thrown a bunch of money at one safety (Adrian Wilson) and you can argue whether it’s prudent to have so much coin committed to that position. But they’re likely going to lose their big money linebacker (Karlos Dansby) and certainly don’t want their fan base to think they’re back to shopping at the dollar store.
I have no real foundation for my hunch, though I did see that one of the analysts on the NFL Network said the Cardinals are the favorites to re-sign Rolle.
That nugget, my gut and Ochocinco’s tweet lead me to believe that Rolle isn’t going anywhere.
