Sources: Arizona Cardinals Using Confidentiality Agreements to Curb Negative Press

It’s been a football-centric training camp for the Arizona Cardinals, which has been a departure from the off-field chaos of the past few years.

The team is hoping the attention remains on the field — and is using its financial means to increase those chances.

A large number of outgoing employees have been offered money to sign confidentiality agreements over the past year-plus, multiple sources said.

The offers have come at an irregularly high frequency compared to previous years, as the perceived goal is to minimize any more damage to the club’s reputation, sources said.

The Cardinals have been at the center of myriad negative headlines since 2022, which includes multiple exposés about untoward behavior by owner Michael Bidwill, a $3 million judgment to ex-exec Terry McDonough for defamation, allegations of burner phone usage by multiple high-ranking employees in 2018, failing grades from an NFLPA survey two years running and allegations of racist hiring practices by ex-coach Steve Wilks, among several other things.

The use of confidentiality agreements by the Cardinals is not new, but mid-tier and lower-level employees were not generally offered money for their silence before the cascade of recent criticism, per sources.

The tsunami of bad press has calmed of late, and by paying ex-employees to not speak out, the team hopes to keep past incidents from being shared publicly, according to sources.

The most recent major negative headline came in early April, when McDonough won $3 million from the Cardinals in arbitration for defamation in a ruling by NFL arbitrator Jeffrey Mishkin.

Mishkin also found that the Cardinals did use burner phones in 2018 when then-GM Steve Keim was suspended and not supposed to be communicating with the team. An email to an NFL spokesman on Tuesday inquiring about potential punishment for the burner phone scandal was not returned.

Bidwill has started to do more public events of late, giving an interview to Arizona Sports and taking selfies with fans at training camp.