Arizona Cardinals Face True Super Bowl-or-Bust Season with Big Decisions Looming

With the (glaring) exception of the way it ended, the 2015 season was a great success for the Arizona Cardinals. The team won a franchise-record 13 regular-season games, winning the NFC West and securing a first-round playoff bye (also for the first time in team history).

That big season cemented the status of head coach Bruce Arians and general manager Steve Keim as one of the best duos in the league. But that big season has also led to big expectations. Simply put, anything less than a trip to Houston and Super Bowl LI would be considered a disappointment.

Those expectations are far from the only pressure on the Redbirds this season. There's another huge force enveloping the Cardinals, squeezing them toward either a trip to Texas or a round of "what ifs?" and head-shaking.

The forces of change in the NFL...

Because one way or another, the Arizona Cardinals are all but surely going to be a much different football team one year from now.

Free agency is something every NFL team has to deal with in the salary-cap era of the NFL. The collective bargaining agreement signed in 2011 added a new wrinkle. Now, it isn't just veteran free agents knocking on the doors of huge paydays. Younger players with expiring rookie deals want their piece of the pie, too, and the exponential explosion of their contracts from Year 4 (or 5) to the next can be difficult to squeeze under the cap.

Those lower rookie contracts have made it easier for teams to build around high-priced superstars, but sooner or later, the bill becomes due.

And boy oh boy is the bill coming due for the Cardinals.

Player	Position	Age	Notes
C. Campbell	DE	29	2-Time Pro Bowler
C. Jones	OLB	26	Career-high 12.5 sacks in 2015 (NE)
T. Mathieu	DB	24	PFF's No. 1 CB in 2015
L. Fitzgerald	WR	32	Career-high 109 catches in 2015
M. Floyd	WR	26	849 RY, 6 TD in 2015
E. Mathis	OG	34	2-Time Pro Bowler

They say that defense wins championships, and the Cardinals were spurred to the NFC West crown last year in large part due to a unit that ranked fifth in total defense and tied for seventh in scoring defense. It's a defense bookended in the front by defensive end Calais Campbell and in the back by versatile defensive back Tyrann Mathieu.

Both are set to hit free agency after the 2016 season.

The 29-year-old Campbell, who has played his entire eight-year career in Arizona, tallied 61 tackles and five sacks last year en route to being named the NFL's No. 8 3-4 defensive end by Pro Football Focus. He told NFL.com that his wish is to finish his career where it started:

"

I very much hope to be a Cardinal my whole career. It's hard to do, and there's a lot of prestige that comes with staying with one team your whole career. … I would really like to be one of those guys that gets a chance to, and, I mean, it's always tough because it's the business side of the game. But I still feel like I'm in the prime of my career, going into Year 9. I'm a veteran, I like to joke around like I'm old, but I feel great -- I feel fantastic.

I feel like I have a lot of good years left in me, and I would love to spend them in Arizona and trying to bring the Bird Gang a championship.

"

Mathieu, on the other hand, has gone from being one of the riskiest picks of the 2013 NFL draft to one of the league's biggest difference-makers in the secondary. The Honey Badger, who sees significant playing time at both cornerback and safety, was PFF's top-ranked corner in 2015. A panel of analysts at NFL.com recently named Mathieu the league's top safety in 2016.

For his part, Mathieu said Earl Thomas of Seattle is better at safety, but he didn't protest too loudly:

Whatever position you want to say he plays, the fact is, when healthy, Mathieu is a Defensive Player of the Year candidate.

The notion of either defensive star playing elsewhere in 2017 is heresy to fans of the team. And Keim assured Kyle Odegard of the team's website that everything that can be done is being done where Campbell and Mathieu are concerned:

"

People ask all the time whether I think we’re close or we’re not. I don’t think it’s fair for us or the player to make a comment because, really, I don’t know what close is anymore. We’ll just continue to stay aggressive, though. That’s the one thing I’ve said earlier: Whether it’s signing players, whether it’s readjusting guys who need to be signed for extensions, we’ll continue to stay aggressive and try to keep our foot on the gas pedal. There are always points in a negotiation when it’s more pressing than not.

"

The problem is a mathematical one. Both Campbell and Mathieu will command annual salaries well in excess of $12 million a season. With cornerback Patrick Peterson already setting the team back over $14 million a season, per Spotrac, fitting two more big paychecks under the cap would be no small feat.

And that's without so much as considering Chandler Jones, whom the Cardinals acquired in an offseason trade. The 26-year-old Jones, who piled up a career-high 12.5 sacks for the New England Patriots a year ago, was dealt by the Pats in large part because his contract is also set to expire after the 2016 season.

As Fletcher Cox of the Philadelphia Eagles and Muhammad Wilkerson of the New York Jets have shown in just the past few weeks, elite pass-rushers command $15 million or more a season in today's NFL.

To keep Mathieu, Campbell, Jones and Peterson, the Cardinals could conceivably have to lock up $60 million in cap space per season in four players. That's nigh impossible for an NFL team to do, especially when they also have decisions to make on the offensive side of the ball.

The engine that drove the NFL's second-highest-scoring offense in 2015 was quarterback Carson Palmer and the three-headed receiving monster that is veteran Larry Fitzgerald and youngsters Michael Floyd and John Brown. Fitzgerald caught a career-best 109 passes last season. Both he and Brown surpassed 1,000 receiving yards.

Brown and Palmer are signed through the 2017 season. But both Fitzgerald and Floyd are set to hit free agency next spring.

At 32, Fitzgerald is much closer to the end of the line than the beginning. Coming off one of the best seasons of a career that will probably end with a bust in Canton, the best wideout the Cardinals have ever had told NFL Total Access, via Chris Wesseling of NFL.com, he's still got plenty left in the tank:

"

I'd be lying if I told you I didn't think about it. Just trying to prepare for the next phase in your life, but I have a lot of good football left in me. How long I will play, I don't know. I feel great. I can still play at a high level. I just have to take it one year at a time and I got a really fantastic team I'm a part of.

"

The problem, at least in the opinion of Eric Eager of Pro Football Focus, is Fitzgerald's contract is a noose around the franchise's neck:

"

Fitzgerald’s contract has been, and will continue to be, a burden on the Cardinals’ cap situation. Even though he is not under contract for the 2017 and 2018 seasons, he will still account for $9.7 million in dead money those two years. With Arizona boasting young talent in Michael Floyd, John Brown, and J.J. Nelson on the outside, it appears as though 2016 will be Fitzgerald’s last with the Cardinals.

"

Now, that paragraph is the sort that brings out the pitchforks-and-torches crowd in the Valley of the Sun, but it illustrates the pickle Keim is in with his wide receivers. If Fitzgerald has another solid season, it will be hard to justify severing ties with one of the most popular players in franchise history.

However, if the Cardinals keep him, then Floyd's probably a goner—regardless of what he does in 2016. There just isn't enough money to go around. Not with all those defensive contracts expiring and Palmer and Peterson taking up in the neighborhood of $30 million in cap space.

Yes, contracts can be structured in a manner that attempts to balance out cap hits. Current players' deals can be redone. But there are only so many shell games that can be played. And only so much green to spend.

It's the cost of success. The price of drafting well. Keim is going to have some difficult choices to make a year from now. Something has to give, and that means someone has to go.

And all that's without mentioning the cold reality that Palmer is a 36-year-old (37 in December) quarterback playing on a twice-torn ACL.

The good news, of course, is that these are all tomorrow's problems. Today, the Cardinals are a football team loaded with talent in every facet of the game. They are the No. 3 (tied) favorite to represent the NFC in Super Bowl LI, according to Odds Shark.

And they are led, in Arians and Keim, by men who have done nothing short of a phenomenal job turning the Cardinals from perennial doormats into legitimate Super Bowl contenders.

With that status, however, comes the pressure of expectations that the team will shake off last year's humiliation in the NFC Championship Game. And it'd better do so quickly. Nothing is guaranteed in the NFL. Windows don't stay open forever.

For the Cardinals, 2016 may be as good as it's going to get. Super Bowl or bust.

The future is now.

Gary Davenport is an NFL analyst at Bleacher Report and a member of the Fantasy Sports Writers Association and Pro Football Writers of America. You can follow Gary on Twitter @IDPSharks.