Cardinals executive Terry McDonough filed an arbitration claim against Michael Bidwill, accusing the owner of cheating and gross misconduct. McDonough’s filing claims the owner sabotaged his career in retaliation for an objection to support a plan to illegally communicate with then-suspended GM Steve Keim, Adam Schefter of ESPN.com reports.
A former GM candidate, McDonough accuses Bidwill of hatching a scheme in which McDonough and then-head coach Steve Wilks would communicate with Keim using burner phones during the GM’s team-imposed suspension in 2018. The Cards suspended Keim after his extreme DUI arrest that year. McDonough’s claim indicates he and Wilks objected to Bidwill’s plan. Upon voicing concerns about the alleged plan, McDonough said Bidwill wrote him up for insubordination and later followed through with a demotion. The demotion occurred in 2019, according to Stewart Mandel, Kalyn Kahler and Mike Sando of The Athletic (subscription required).
A Cardinals exec for the past 10 years, McDonough was a finalist for the 49ers’ GM job that ended up going to John Lynch in 2017. He has hovered off the radar since but has been an NFL staffer for more than 30 years. The claim also accuses Bidwill of sabotaging Wilks’ first HC opportunity — which ended after one season, a 3-13 year in 2018 — and berating McDonough since he came forward with objections to the 2018 plan. Wilks, whom the Cardinals replaced with Kliff Kingsbury in 2019, joined Brian Flores‘ class-action discrimination lawsuit last year. Wilks alleged the Cardinals gave him little chance to succeed and “unfairly and discriminatorily” fired him at the end of the ’18 season.
The Cardinals, who have since replaced Keim after 10 seasons in the GM chair, have denied McDonough’s claims, calling them “outlandish.” McDonough is seeking damages for breach of contract and emotional distress.
Keim’s suspension, which ran from July to August of 2018, prevented him from communication with Cardinals personnel. The filing indicates McDonough and Wilks voiced objections to the plan July 23, 2018. McDonough and Wilks followed through with Bidwill’s alleged scheme and used the burner phones to talk with Keim. McDonough is still in possession of the burner phone, according to his claim, which includes a picture of the device.
Once the Cardinals’ VP of player personnel, McDonough is listed on the Cardinals’ website as a senior personnel executive. McDonough informed Bidwill in 2019 he recorded phone conversations between he and Keim during the GM’s suspension, according to The Athletic. The demotion to senior personnel executive, per the claim, occurred shortly after McDonough’s text to Bidwill regarding the Keim recordings. The demotion cut McDonough’s salary from $550K to $330K. In 2022, McDonough said he was demoted again — from seventh to ninth in command. The Cards had extended him back in 2017, but this relationship has gone south since.
When Keim took a leave of absence last year — a hiatus that led to his permanent departure from the team — Bidwill installed execs Quentin Harris and Adrian Wilson as front office bosses in the interim. McDonough has alleged his refusal to go along with Bidwill’s plan led to career advancement opportunities disappearing. McDonough has not interviewed for a GM position since 2017; the claim also indicates Bidwill “bullied, belittled and criticized” McDonough in front of coaches and scouts during two meetings.
Regarding the phone scheme, the Cardinals denied Bidwill orchestrated it. The team said, via Schefter, another Cards exec “interfered with the protocol of that suspension” and credits the owner of directing the phones be retrieved and all communication with Keim stopped. McDonough’s filing also accuses Bidwill of treating a Black employee and two pregnant women poorly and creating “an environment of fear for minority employees.” Denying this claim as well, the Cardinals labeled it “a transparent smear that is truly beneath contempt.”
Under league rules, the Cardinals have 20 days to respond to McDonough’s filing. The NFL will handle the matter through its arbitration policy, per The Athletic. McDonough has been in the NFL since interning with the 49ers in 1989. He is the son of famed reporter Will McDonough, brother of ESPN play-by-play man Sean McDonough and former Phoenix Suns GM Ryan McDonough.
I’ll see you Dan Snyder and Jim Irsay, and raise you…
Don’t forget the Miami owner who tried bribing S Peyton and TB to come to Miami.
That would be Stephen Ross, who held a fund-raiser for Donald Trump in the Hamptons one week after a massacre in El Paso.
So what?
“Extreme DUI”. Silly phrasing.
Whole organization is a train wreck. Once the Commanders are sold, they’ll pass the baton to the Cardinals for the worst run organization from top down.
Raiders and Browns are certainly in that conversation, too.
Chargers never win either. Jets, Texans, Jags (last year was a fluke),Bears, Lions, Panthers, Falcons….Lots of bad owners out there.
I think the Lions are starting to get it figured out. Otherwise, you’re not wrong.
I hope Detroit figures it out. I really do. I like to see a downtrodden franchise rise up. I think D Campbell is a solid coach.
If any team is overdue to get it right, it’s the Lions.
I fail to see the issue with not taking a team-imposed suspension seriously.
Well, nobody can speak for Bidwell’s treatment of specific people and whether it constitutes a pattern…except for the people involved. Therefore, I won’t comment on that.
However, the degree to which the Wilks experiment imploded and the experience with which the Cardinals erased that rebuild was shockingly fast. I personally felt that neither Wilks nor Rosen were ever given an actual chance to develop, and that the Cardinals put significantly fewer resources into that roster than they did a year later for Murray’s rebuild. I don’t know the intimate details as to why-it always seemed from the outside that Keim just saw Murray and fell in love with and had a hair brained impulse to just blow the thing up-but it certainly seemed from the exterior that the Cardinals never gave the Wilks regime an actual chance. Some have said that the Wilks regime seemed listless and that he himself seemed clueless, but if the organization was not supporting him in the meantime, it begs the question of how much that incompetence was his fault and how much went back to the Cards themselves.
My question here, of course, is how much of the Cardinals’ dysfunction is on the Bidwells and how much is on Keim. Obviously, neither are totally replete from blame, as owners ultimately oversee everything, but all of these plots that come up over the years appear to be Keim-hatched plots in some way, shape, or form. Most owners will trust their longtime GM-they shouldn’t, sometimes, but they do. Did Boswell actively scheme with Keim, direct him, or simply go along with what Keim influenced him to do?
All Phoenix sports team
Even the Phoenix Mercury of the WNBA?
He said sports team..not sure wnba counts. More people have seen bigfoot than have seen a wnba game
How many Andrew Tate apostles does it take to screw in a light bulb?
I know the answer to this one…1 he does it himself and there better be dinner on the table when he’s done.
The PHOENIX suns have a really good chance to win the championship this year
How is this cheating? Isn’t cheating supposed to help you win? Keim proved he didn’t know how to do that. Lol
All jokes aside, oof. Just oof. If the allegations are proven true, they should hit the Cardinals hard with a fine and Bidwell should be barred from anything with the team for a while.
That photo of Bidwell is priceless.
If there’s a fart in the room I can’t tell if he’s reacting to it, guilty of doing it, or just incredulous in his cathartic realization that it’s a giant farting world.
link to cdn.profootballrumors.com
That photographer deserves a Pulitzer for capturing Bidwell mid-shart.
Seriously, one for the yearbook for sure.
Can’t accuse Bidwill of winning.
Even when the Big Red reached the Super Bowl?
I suppose that’s more of an “in spite of” than a “contributed to”.
But in all seriousness, bad owners can sink a franchise. Good owners can elevate one. The vast majority probably are simply reliant on who they hire.