Arizona Cardinals safety Antrel Rolle is likely to be released soon because the Cardinals don’t want to pay his $4 million roster bonus, and he says he won’t take a pay cut. But Rolle may already know that he has at least one suitor in the Chicago Bears.
Brad Biggs of the Chicago Tribune reports that it’s expected that the Bears will target Rolle when he becomes available.
It would be tampering for the Bears to come right out and say they want Rolle, but it’s easy for teams to get around the tampering rules by leaking word that they’re interested in a player who’s under contract to another team. In the case of the Bears, they’re not saying publicly that they want Rolle, but head coach Lovie Smith did say at the NFL scouting combine in Indianapolis that he wants to sign a free-agent safety.
“We need to improve our safety position, period,” Smith said. “Haven’t been pleased with the production we’ve gotten. I think we had one interception from the safety position. That was one of the reasons why I feel like our takeaways were down this year. We need to bring in or just get more competition and just improvement in general.”
The 27-year-old Rolle, who started every game but one for the Cardinals the last two years, grew up in Florida and has expressed interest in signing with the Dolphins.