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Even after locking up star WR Larry Fitzgerald with a four-year, $40 million deal earlier this offseason and putting long-term contract talks on the back burner with ILB Karlos Dansby — who will settle for an $8.065 million one-year tender this season after failing to agree to a deal before the recent deadline for “franchise” players — Cardinals GM Rod Graves still has very a full plate to deal with on the contract front. In varying degrees, three players — WR Anquan Boldin, DL Darnell Dockett and DE Antonio Smith — have publicly voiced displeasure over their contract situations since the end of the 2007 season. But there’s another lower-profile player on the contract front who team insiders believe could rapidly become a much more high-profile concern — star S Adrian Wilson, whose current contract is set to expire after the 2009 season. Although team insiders tell us the Cardinals know what they’ve got in Wilson and feel confident he will be ready to go full tilt in Week One, there is a feeling in the desert that Wilson could have been a bit more involved in the team’s minicamps and OTAs after a heel injury put a halt to his 2007 campaign with a month remaining in the season. “Make no mistake, Adrian definitely wants to be paid, and you could make a strong case that he should now be first in line for a new contract,” a longtime team insider told PFW. “That said, he’s always been a good soldier, and it’s not in his personality to be a disruptive force in the locker room.” However, with Boldin’s contract situation now widely considered Graves’ most urgent hurdle, the Cardinals had better realize that nobody will be watching how they handle that situation any more closely than Wilson.
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