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The Arizona Cardinals are in a mess heading into the NFL free agency period, and they have no one to blame but themselves.

Cardinals wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald is owed a base salary of $16.5 million for the 2008 season, thanks to the incentive-laden rookie deal that the Cardinals agreed to when they made him the third pick in the 2004 NFL draft. As a base salary, the entire contract will count against the team's 2008 salary cap, which means about 15% of the cap is tied into one player.

That will make it extremely difficult for the Cardinals to hang onto all the other players they want to keep, including linebackers Karlos Dansby and Calvin Pace, running back Edgerrin James and both quarterbacks, Matt Leinart and Kurt Warner. They seem to already have resigned themselves to losing third receive Bryant Johnson.


Cardinals general manager Rod Graves acknowledges that if the team can't convince Fitzgerald to re-do his deal, there will be serious trouble:

"We'll have to see how the landscape develops as we try and get these contracts signed. ... I think a lot will depend on Larry Fitzgerald's deal, whether or not we can get something in place that will allow us some flexibility. If not, we could very well be faced with some very tough decisions down the road.

"We haven't talked candidly about where those tough decisions might be. We know if this deal is not restructured, it will entail us having to make some tough moves."

But really, why should Fitzgerald play ball, unless the Cardinals are prepared to give him a significant raise down the road in exchange for less money now? Ultimately, the Cardinals are the ones who agreed to this cap-crippling contract, and if they didn't plan well enough to be prepared for a $16.5 million cap hit, that's their problem, not Fitzgerald's.