Terry McDonough might be a jerk, but that doesn't mean he's wrong about Cardinals

Are we ever going to hear something positive about the Arizona Cardinals?

Team president Michael Bidwill is getting accused by a former player-personnel executive, Terry McDonough, of bullying and cheating in a filing with the NFL that adds heft to a discrimination lawsuit the team has been named in by former coach Steve Wilks.

It’s the latest report of ridiculousness from the Dignity Health Arizona Cardinals Training Center that includes, but is not limited to, flunking grades in a players’ union survey, the dismissal of an offensive line coach accused of groping a woman on a team trip and the contract debacle that tried to demean their star quarterback into studying film.

In McDonough’s filing, first reported on Tuesday by ESPN, the former scout said he and Wilks “objected to and sought to avoid participation in a scheme hatched by Bidwill to utilize burner phones to communicate with general manager Steve Keim — in violation of the terms of Keim’s suspension for extreme DUI — during a critical period of the Cardinals training camp in the summer of 2018,” the arbitration claim states.

Bidwill is vehemently denying McDonough’s claims, calling them “wildly false, reckless and an opportunistic ploy for financial gain,” in a statement from external public relations advisor Jim McCarthy.

The response is remarkable in its length and detail, but I can’t help but feel bad for McDonough.

His claim says the team marginalized and blackballed him, stalling a career that had been on track to land him a job as a general manager. Bidwill, in the statement, denies this accusation, as well.

But could you imagine your boss asking you to break a rule, then retaliating against you for trying to stand up to him? And then, in a profession you had given your life to, no one gave you a chance to plead your side before accepting all the negative things that were said and simply discarding you?

In response, the team is attacking McDonough’s character, saying in the statement that he had “difficulties in his personal life” and an “often volatile demeanor toward colleagues.”

So what?

Let’s assume McDonough is 100 percent to blame in the “difficulties in his personal life” and that he is an “often volatile” jerk.

That doesn’t make him a liar, and it certainly doesn’t mean he deserves to be ostracized and doubted before getting to plead his side.

It will take awhile before the case is settled and all the details are revealed, but some conclusions are already fair to draw:

— It looks like the days are over where brutish behavior from NFL executives could go unchecked.

We’ve seen the discrimination case from Brian Flores and other Black coaches, including Wilks. We’ve seen leaked emails between former Washington owner Dan Snyder and Jon Gruden. And we’re watching to see whether a lawsuit comes out of the Jim Trotter case, in which an exemplary Black reporter asked a tough question of Commissioner Roger Goodell in an open press conference and later lost his job.

— It looks like McDonough might have been the brains behind the team’s success in the Keim era.

We’ve seen the team sputter to two last-place finishes in the last four years, and who could forget the collapse of 2021? Could McDonough have prevented those lapses.

— It looks like McDonough is standing up for people besides himself.

He threw support behind Wilks and accused Bidwill of mistreating female employees.

— It looks like Bidwill has an opportunity for reflection. It could be that this case has absolutely no merit whatsoever, but there sure are a lot of accusations flying around.

Bidwill has always bristled at the suggestion that the franchise is the “same ol’ Cardinals.”

And it looks like he might be right. It looks like it might be worse.

Are we ever going to hear something positive about the Arizona Cardinals?

Reach Moore at gmoore@azcentral.com or 602-444-2236. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter @SayingMoore.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Ex-Cardinals exec McDonough shouldn't be ostracized without due process