The Facts: According to MMQB's Albert Breer, if there’s one thing to take away going forward on Hopkins’s suspension, the veteran wideout will be heading into a critical 11-game stretch. How the back end of 2022 goes for him could go a long way to determining where his career goes thereafter.

Diehards Line: Over the first eight years of his NFL career, seven in Houston and one in Arizona, Hopkins started 126 of 128 games—missing one game in 2017 and another in ’19. Last season, however, he missed seven regular season contests and the Cardinals’ playoff game due to hamstring and knee injuries, and thanks to a six-game PED suspension, he’ll continue to be on the sideline quite often for Arizona. When Hopkins returns from his suspension, he’ll have been out for 14 of the Cardinals’ previous 16 games. He turns 30 in June. His contract spikes in 2023—he’s owed a non-guaranteed $19.45 million salary that year, his age-31 season, and is slated to carry a cap number of $27.2 million. And after that, presumably, Kyler Murray will be off his rookie contract. As Breer put it, "It doesn’t take a direct line to GM Steve Keim to see where this might be headed. ..." In addition, Breer was told that Hopkins’s looming absence was, indeed, a factor in the Cardinals’ pursuit of, and eventual trade for, Ravens receiver Marquise Brown. Obviously, they’ve known for a while that Hopkins was facing the suspension. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they wouldn’t have done the Brown trade anyway.