Tyrann Mathieu is a weird player. A very good player, sure, but not exactly a conventional one. He was drafted out of LSU as a cornerback, started off his NFL career as a safety and last season pinged back and forth between the positions on a snap-to-snap basis. He lined up very often in the slot (about two-thirds of passing down snaps), but because of the way the Cardinals deploy their defensive backs, it's difficult to tell who is a cornerback and who is a safety on any given play.
What was clear throughout the season was that a healthy Mathieu is one of the very best defensive players in the entire league. Now that he's headed into the fourth and final year of his rookie contract, extension talks will probably heat up fairly soon. His injury history complicates negotiations a bit (he's suffered a season-ending ACL tear in two of his three seasons), but so does his lack of a consistent position.
“I truly believe deep down in my heart that something will get done,” Mathieu said of contract talks, per Pro Football Talk. “It’s not one of those things that’s easy. It’s going to take a little bit of time. I don’t necessarily have a true position, so there’s different things that go into it.”
As PFT noted, the franchise tag for safeties pays about $3.1 million less than the tag for cornerbacks. Being that tag values are often used as a baseline in negotiations, it could be difficult to figure out where to start with Mathieu, who is listed as a free safety but spends a lot of his time playing corner.
“It’s gonna be kind of a wrestling match but at the end of the day as long as we understand it’s a business and as long as we take care of our relationships I think it’ll be all right,” Mathieu said. “But like I said I’m not really focused on the contract side of things. It’s more about me getting healthy and really trying to dominate next year.”
That makes a good deal of sense. If Mathieu wants to be in Arizona and the Cardinals want to keep him (which they presumably do), something will likely work out eventually. It could just take some time and tough negotiations to get to that point. How much the team is willing to offer and when a potential deal gets done is not something Mathieu can control by himself.
What he can control is how well he plays. He's still working his way back from the latest ACL tear, but he if gets onto the field and plays at the level he's made his custom during his short time in the league, it will go a long way toward giving the Cards no choice but to pay up.
