Cardinals Place OLB Jarvis Jones On NFI, LB Deone Bucannon On PUP List

Update:

The Arizona Cardinals announced Friday that they’ve placed OLB Jarvis Jones ends up on the active/non-football-injury list and LB Deone Bucannon on the active/PUP list, per Darren Urban.

Urban says that Jones “tweaked” a quadricep muscle during the run test Friday and HC Bruce Arians expects him to miss a couple of days of work.

Jones, 27, was taken with the No. 17 overall pick back in 2013. He played out the final year of his four-year, $8,705,502 rookie contract that included a base salary of $1,592,115 for the 2016 season and is now testing the open market as an unrestricted free agent for the first time in his career.

Last year, Pittsburgh declined to pick up Jones’ fifth-year option that would have run them $8.3 million for the 2017 season and he eventually signed a one-year, $2.25 million contract with the Cardinals this past March.

In 2016, Jones appeared in 14 games for the Steelers and recorded 42 tackles, one sack, an interception, two forced fumbles, a recovery and three pass defenses. Pro Football Focus has him rated as the No. 49 edge defender out of 109 qualifying players.

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Cardinals HC Bruce Arians said LB Deone Bucannon will start training camp on the physically unable to perform list, given that he’s still recovering from offseason ankle surgery, according to Mike Jurecki.

Arians added that Bucannon is “ahead of schedule” and is targeting a Week 1 return, per Jurecki.

Bucannon mentioned recently that he wants to start for Week 1, but won’t push to get back before he’s ready to play, so this news does not come as a big surprise.

“I want to start the season,” Bucannon said, via AzCardinals.com. “I’m not here to rush anything and I’m not going to put a timetable on it, but at the same time, I want to get out there as quickly as I possibly can. But get out there at 100 percent so I can do the best for the team and not be a liability.

Bucannon, 24, was taken with the No. 27 overall pick back in 2014. He’s currently in the final year of his four-year, $7,709,200 contract and stands to make a base salary of $981,673 for the 2017 season.

The Cardinals picked up Bucannon’s fifth-year option last month, which will run them $8,718,000 million for the 2018 season, but is guaranteed only for injury and won’t prevent them from working on a long-term extension over the next year.

In 2016, Bucannon appeared in 13 games and recorded 91 tackles, no interceptions, a fumble recovery and four pass defenses. Pro Football Focus has him rated as the No. 37 linebacker out of 87 qualifying players.