Howard Balzer breaks down LB Cody Simon’s rookie deal with the Cardinals<\/p>\n
The draft is now three weeks old, and as of Wednesday, 75.5 percent of the picks (194 of 257) have signed contracts. With the signing this week of their fourth-round pick, linebacker Cody Simon, the Arizona Cardinals<\/a> have five of their seven choices under contract.<\/p>\n Here are the specifics of Simon\u2019s deal:<\/p>\n LB Cody Simon contract, salary details<\/p>\n As a fourth-round choice (115 overall), the total value of his four-year deal is $5,204,760 and includes a signing bonus of $1,004,760. His salary cap charge for 2025 is $1,091,190.<\/p>\n Simon\u2019s base salaries are the minimums for all four years: $840,000 this year;\u00a0$1.005 million in 2026, $1.12 million in 2027 and $1.235 million in 2028.<\/p>\n He has a full split for 2025 and a preseason split for 2026, which means his salary would decrease to $490,000 in 2025 and $540,000 in 2026 if he is on injured reserve.<\/p>\n In 2024, the 6-foot-2, 229-pound Simon was a team captain at Ohio State and was a first-team All-Big Ten selection after leading the national champions with career-highs in tackles (112), tackles for loss (13), sacks (7.0) and passes defensed (seven).<\/p>\n In playoff wins over Oregon and Notre Dame, Simon was named Defensive Player of the Game.<\/p>\n Away from the field, Simon was a four-time Buckeyes Scholar-Athlete and Academic All-Big 10 for four years.<\/p>\n He was also a four-time OSU Scholar-Athlete and four-time Academic All-Big Ten selection.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rookie contract details around NFL<\/p>\n Of the league total, all 41 of the seventh-round selections have signed. Only two of the 119 picks in the fifth, six or seventh round are unsigned.<\/p>\n The breakdown of rounds for the signed contracts league-wide is:<\/p>\n First round: 16 of 32Second round: 2 of 32Third round: 33 of 38Fourth round: 26 of 36Fifth round: 37 of 38Sixth round: 39 of 40Seventh round: 41 of 41<\/p>\n The lethargy in signing second-round picks, of which the Cardinals have cornerback Will Johnson, is likely linked to the contracts for the first two choices in the round.<\/p>\n Browns<\/a> linebacker Carson Schwesinger (first pick) and Texans<\/a> wide receiver Jayden Higgins (second) each signed four-year deals that are fully guaranteed.<\/p>\n Get more Cardinals and NFL coverage from Cards Wire’s Jess Root and others by listening to the latest on the Rise Up, See Red podcast. Subscribe on Spotify<\/a>,\u00a0YouTube<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0Apple podcasts<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Howard Balzer breaks down LB Cody Simon’s rookie deal with the Cardinals The draft is now three weeks…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22789,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2078],"tags":[247,265,375,390,2604,322,86,1327,85,54,324,7,221,253,1184,248,267,49,1225,246,88,6,245,264,1602,2517,9,266,1223,222],"class_list":{"0":"post-56638","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arizona-cardinals","8":"tag-american","9":"tag-american-football","10":"tag-arizona","11":"tag-arizona-cardinals","12":"tag-arizonacardinals","13":"tag-big","14":"tag-browns","15":"tag-cardinals","16":"tag-cleveland","17":"tag-cleveland-browns","18":"tag-conference","19":"tag-football","20":"tag-houston","21":"tag-houston-texans","22":"tag-listicle","23":"tag-national","24":"tag-national-sports","25":"tag-ncaa","26":"tag-ncaa-big-ten-conference","27":"tag-neutral","28":"tag-news","29":"tag-nfl","30":"tag-overall","31":"tag-overall-neutral","32":"tag-smg","33":"tag-smg-listicle","34":"tag-sports","35":"tag-sports-news","36":"tag-ten","37":"tag-texans"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114521557329441953","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56638","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=56638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}