If the Arizona Cardinals are planning to demand that Tyrann Mathieu accept a deal with no guaranteed money, they’d better be ready for a protracted contract dispute.
Responding to the talk that the Cardinals weren’t planning to give Mathieu any guarantees on his rookie deal, agent Patrick Lawlor said exactly what he should say: Mathieu would refuse such a deal.
“Ridiculous. Not gonna happen. We had no contract discussion with them,” Lawlor told Ian Rapoport of NFL Network.
There are risks associated with Mathieu because of the multiple failed drug tests that got him kicked off the team at LSU, but the Cardinals understood those risks and selected Mathieu with the 69th pick in the NFL draft anyway. Mathieu has already paid a price for his drug use because his draft stock dropped as a result of those failed drug tests. The idea that Mathieu has to accept a substandard contract on top of that is, in fact, ridiculous.