Patrick Peterson isn’t going anywhere; Cardinals general manager Steve Keim wants to make that clear.
As the NFL world awaits news of a potential landing spot for Jaguars cornerback Jalen Ramsey, Keim made it known Friday on the Doug & Wolf show that Peterson, the Cardinals‘ top coverman — who is serving a six-game suspension — isn’t going anywhere.
“We’re not trading Pat and that’s something we’ve been very consistent with,” Keim told Doug & Wolf when asked if he would consider moving the eight-time Pro Bowler. “When you look at the kind of player Pat is and I think arguably he’s the best corner in the National Football League, all you have to do is say, ‘Does this make our team better or worse?’ I think to lose someone like Pat Peterson would make us worse.”
As for any interest the Cardinals might or might not have in Ramsey, Keim was mum on that for good reason.
“Any thing that I would say about another player under contract would be considered tampering,” Keim said. “So any interest or lack thereof interest is something I can’t discuss.”
Rumors swirled regarding that topic after reports earlier in the week surfaced about pass rusher Chandler Jones restructuring his contract to create more cap space. Keim stressed it was just a relatively normal process.
“We were under a million dollars from a cap standpoint,” Keim said Friday. “It’s not anything that we haven’t done before. It’s … an exercise that a lot of teams do year in and year out, and it’s just to increase some flexibility. There’s been a number of injuries that we’ve incurred in the preseason.
“When you have injury replacements and all those sort of things, you just want to make sure you have some flexibility moving forward throughout the season. It also gives you the ability to extend any players in the future that you’re excited about. I wouldn’t read anything into that conversion.”
So, with four games left on his suspension for violating the NFL’s policy on performance-enhancing drugs, Peterson is set to return to the welcoming arms of the Cardinals.