March 8, 2026, 5:43 p.m. MT<\/p>\n
The 2026 league year is coming next month. It officially begins on March 11, with the legal negotiating period beginning on March 9.<\/p>\n
The Arizona Cardinals<\/a> have many roster decisions to make before then.<\/p>\n Leading up to the new league year, we will profile every player on the roster, go over what they did last season, what their contract status is and what they face in 2026.<\/p>\n Next up is linebacker J.J. Russell.<\/p>\n J.J. Russell 2025 season<\/p>\n After three years with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers<\/a>, he signed with the Cardinals May. However, his season ended before it began when he suffered a serious neck injury in training camp in a collision with rookie safety Kitan Crawford, landing him on injured reserve for the year.<\/p>\n Need a news break? Check out the all new PLAY hub with puzzles, games and more!<\/a>J.J. Russell contract status<\/p>\n Russell will be an unrestricted free agent when the new league year begins on March 11.<\/p>\n J.J. Russell offseason outlook<\/p>\n The major question for Russell is whether he has recovered enough to play football again. It is uncertain whether the Cardinals will bring him back in 2026.<\/p>\n Get more Cardinals<\/a> and NFL coverage from Cards<\/a> 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":"March 8, 2026, 5:43 p.m. MT The 2026 league year is coming next month. It officially begins on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":801340,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2078],"tags":[95878,375,390,2604,1327,7,6,95973,95974,95882,95890,95896,95888,95895,95906,96008,95883,96239,95881],"class_list":{"0":"post-801339","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arizona-cardinals","8":"tag-accessfree","9":"tag-arizona","10":"tag-arizona-cardinals","11":"tag-arizonacardinals","12":"tag-cardinals","13":"tag-football","14":"tag-nfl","15":"tag-sstssportsnflcardinals","16":"tag-sstsncardinals","17":"tag-tagamerican-football","18":"tag-tagarizona-cardinals","19":"tag-tagnational-sports","20":"tag-tagnfl","21":"tag-tagnfl-hub","22":"tag-tagoverall-positive","23":"tag-tagsmg-listicle","24":"tag-tagsports-news","25":"tag-tagtampa-bay-buccaneers","26":"tag-typestory"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116196673009116666","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801339","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=801339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/801340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=801339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=801339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=801339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}