The Cardinals released Terrell Suggs, head coach Kliff Kingsbury announced. The 37-year-old Suggs will now be available for the league’s other 31 teams, via the waiver wire. 
The seven-time Pro-Bowler could be an interesting pickup for contenders between now and Monday. Before his release, Suggs started in all 13 games for the Cardinals this season and notched 5.5 sacks plus four forced fumbles.
“Regarding Suggs, we’ve been having conversations as the season went on, as his role has been reduced, and we’ve kind of made the shift to playing some younger players,” Kingsbury said. “… In fairness to him to try to find a better fit right now, we released Terrell today.”
Despite Kingsbury’s comment about Suggs’ diminishing role, he played 76% of the Cardinals’ defensive snaps last week against the Steelers. He’s been over the 70% threshold in nine of Arizona’s 13 contests. The Cards will transition to said younger edge defenders opposite Chandler Jones on Sunday.
Any team claiming Suggs on Monday would owe him $353K, the prorated portion of his salary for the final two weeks of the season. Any team to claim Suggs would have exclusive negotiating rights until March. Suggs was listed as questionable to play this week because of a back injury.
Suggs left the Ravens after 16 seasons to join the Cardinals on a one-year, $10MM deal in the offseason. The Arizona native exited Baltimore as the franchise’s all-time sacks leader with 132.5 QB takedowns – 62.5 more than runner-up Peter Boulware. Suggs also surpassed Ray Lewis to become the Ravens’ games-played leader, suiting up for his 229th career regular-season contest in Week 17 of the 2018 campaign.
Baltimore sits 32nd on the wire, so while a return trip to Maryland would be quite the development, it doesn’t appear likely to occur. The Seahawks, despite their Jadeveon Clowney and Ziggy Ansah additions, rank 29th in sacks. The Clowney- and J.J. Watt-less Texans, as presently constructed, will surely consider such a claim. Houston resides in front of Seattle in waiver priority. Jon Gruden‘s affinity for veterans may not make such a move out of the question for the 6-7 Raiders, especially if they are to beat the Jaguars on Sunday.
