{"id":119086,"date":"2025-06-10T16:19:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-10T16:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/119086\/"},"modified":"2025-06-10T16:19:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-10T16:19:09","slug":"first-round-pick-walter-nolen-iii-signs-rookie-contract","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/119086\/","title":{"rendered":"First-Round Pick Walter Nolen III Signs Rookie Contract"},"content":{"rendered":"

The defensive line is officially complete for the Cardinals, after getting the one still-unsigned piece signed on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

First-round draft pick Walter Nolen III<\/a> inked his rookie contract, a four-year deal with a team option for the 2029 season, a couple of hours before the Cardinals had their first mandatory minicamp practice.<\/p>\n

It leaves only second-round pick Will Johnson unsigned. That isn’t unusual, with a majority of second-round picks still left to do their deals as negotiations over guaranteed money in the round have become a sticking point.<\/p>\n

But Johnson has been at voluntary work and will be at minicamp, as will Nolen \u2013 who was taken to pair with 2024 first-rounder Darius Robinson to anchor the Cardinals’ interior defensive line for the near future.<\/p>\n

After two seasons at Texas A&M, Nolen transferred to Mississippi and had a breakout season, totaling six sacks and 25 QB hurries, as well as a Pro Football Focus run defense grade of 91.6. He still will have to work to earn snaps on a line that also has Robinson, Calais Campbell, Dalvin Tomlinson, Justin Jones, L.J. Collier, Dante Stills and Bilal Nichols.<\/p>\n

The Cardinals hold minicamp practices Tuesday through Thursday and then are off until training camp begins in late July.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The defensive line is officially complete for the Cardinals, after getting the one still-unsigned piece signed on Tuesday.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":119087,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2078],"tags":[375,390,2604,1327,1054,1051,7,1053,1052,88,6,3571,1485],"class_list":{"0":"post-119086","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arizona-cardinals","8":"tag-arizona","9":"tag-arizona-cardinals","10":"tag-arizonacardinals","11":"tag-cardinals","12":"tag-darren-urban","13":"tag-featured-articles","14":"tag-football","15":"tag-home-page-news-headlines","16":"tag-mega-feed","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-nfl","19":"tag-transactions","20":"tag-walter-nolen"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114659983050497413","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119086\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/119087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}