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Josh Weinfuss, ESPN Staff Writer
GLENDALE, Ariz. — The Arizona Cardinals gave linebacker Zaven Collins a two-year extension Saturday, keeping him with the team through the 2026 season, the team announced.
The two-year extension is worth $14 million, including $11.25 million in guarantees, a source told ESPN’s Adam Schefter.
Collins’ agent called him right after the Cardinals reported for camp on July 23 to tell him that Arizona offered an extension. It took from then until Saturday, a span of 11 days, to get the details of the deal done.
Coach Jonathan Gannon said extending Collins was “absolutely” a big win for the organization.
“He’s a big part of what we want to do on defense this year, moving forward,” Gannon said.
Collins was Arizona’s first-round pick in 2021 but didn’t have his fifth-year option picked up. Instead, the Cardinals gave him an extension.
“You can sit there and dwell on it,” he said of not getting the option picked up. “You can kind of roll around and whine about it as much you want. It’s not going to change anything. You can not show up to the building, show up to the building, it’s not going to change anything. You just got to, but you still need to be there for all the right reasons and that is showing up and doing the right stuff, working out every day, being around the team. Being in meetings day and after doing extra work, that’s just part of the job that should already be there. So that’s what I continued to do and the build up to now to when we got the offer. Yeah, I was super excited. I get to stay here and be with the Valley two, three more years and be happy with that. I’m excited.”
In three seasons, Collins has 5.5 sacks, 166 tackles and two interceptions. He played inside linebacker his first two seasons with the Cardinals and then made the transition to outside linebacker last season.
“He does a lot for us,” Gannon said. “He’s got a lot of versatility. He is a playmaker, he is smart. He’s a team-first guy. He’s all about the team. And he works on his game every day.”
In Collins’ first season at outside linebacker, he played in all 17 games and had one pick, recovered one fumble and had 41 tackles, including six for loss. He also had six quarterback hits and 3.5 sacks.
Earlier in camp, general manager Monti Ossenfort said extensions would be handled on case-by-case basis.
“I think we got some newer ways this year [to use Collins] that we sat down in the offseason, said, ‘Hey, can we do some of these things?'” Gannon said. “It’s kind of a little bit of trial by error right now, but he’s doing a good job with it.”
Source: www.espn.com