GM Keim is back with Cards after suspension
GM Keim returns to Cardinals hoping to move on
Contrite, emotional and searching for the right words, Steve Keim returned to his role as general manager of the Arizona Cardinals this week after serving a five-week suspension following a DUI arrest in July. “The truth is there is nothing I can say that will make what I did right,” he said.
No one has the capacity to hurt or help us as much as the people we love. And sometimes they can do both at the same time.
Contrite, emotional and searching for the right words, Cardinals General Manager Steve Keim returned from a fiveweek suspension this week after being arrested for extreme DUI in July.
In his opening comments to reporters on Wednesday, Keim said he thought often during his suspension about what he would say on this day.
How could he apologize in a way that people might accept?
What words could he find to convince them that he was a better person than he was before the arrest?
“The truth is there is nothing I can say that will make what I did right,” he said, correctly.
No, there aren’t. But there are words he can say to let everyone know that he realizes the gravity of his poor judgment on July 4. Keim found them Wednesday when he described the im-
pact the events of that night and the next few weeks had on his family, which includes four children.
“After the reports came out, my 12year-old son was texting his buddy,” said Keim, his voice cracking with emotion, “and he said, ‘They keep showing your dad over and over again on TV. I’m so sorry he’s having to go through that.’ My son said, ‘I’m not. He shouldn’t have been doing it.’
“And my son was right, and I don’t think there’s any feeling that’s worse, if you feel like you let your children down.”
Keim said those words on a podium in a room at the Cardinals’ facility in Tempe. Usually, it’s where good news is announced.
A free agent signed. A trade consummated. A franchise quarterback drafted.
In those times, Keim has commanded the room with confidence that sometimes crossed the border into bravado.
That was not the man we saw on Wednesday, the one who addressed others in the organization on Tuesday and then players on Wednesday morning.
Keim looked thinner, nervous and, at times, was on the edge of tears.
He apologized to the team’s fans, people in the Cardinals organization and, most of all, he said, to his family.
Coach Steve Wilks and team President Michael Bidwill watched the press conference from the back of the room. When Keim was finished, he and Wilks hugged tightly and patted each other hard on the back, like men do these days.
Keim knows, no doubt, that he placed Wilks in a grossly unfair predicament this summer: a first-year coach running his first training camp without a general manager.
Both men said the Cardinals operated just fine without Keim, but if the Cardinals didn’t miss a beat while Keim was gone, why would they want him back?
1 Because Keim is good at what he does. The Cardinals are better when he’s in building. And because Bidwill and Wilks genuinely like him.
“Steve and I, in a short period of time, have become real close,” Wilks said. “We’re not saying we feel sorry for him, but I can’t commend him enough for stepping up and taking ownership and being the man that he is. It touched my heart just to hear how it affected his family.
“When you start talking about kids and things like that, it hits home. I think he’s grown from it. As he mentioned up here, he’s going to be a better person, a better man.”
Bidwill suspended Keim for five weeks, fined him $200,000 and required him to go through counseling and evaluation before returning.
The NFL signed off on that punishment as appropriate.
Keim served two days in jail, a week in home detention and was fined. For a year, he must have an interlock ignition device to operate a vehicle.
So now that he’s back to work, what lessons did Keim learn from this? He tried to explain but admitted that many people won’t believe him. He can’t blame them.
“In fact, taking ownership and my behavior moving forward are what ultimately will define me as a man,” he said. “The two things in my life that I love the most are family and football. Like I said, I put both of those things at a major disadvantage and tough place.
“But at the same time, I don’t know that it was a bad thing to take that time, to self-evaluate, to look at my behaviors, to get stronger and grow as a man.”
Keim described himself as remorseful and humbled after spending part of five weeks “looking deep into your own soul.”
The only question he didn’t directly answer was if the DUI arrest indicated a larger problem with alcohol.
“I don’t want to get too deep into it
“We’re not saying we feel sorry for him, but I can’t commend him enough for stepping up and taking ownership and being the man that he is. It touched my heart just to hear how it affected his family.” Steve Wilks
Cardinals coach, on General Manager Steve Keim’s DUI arrest and five-week suspension
and personal, but I can tell you coming away from this has made me a better man,” he said.
In that small room at the Cardinals’ facility, Keim over the years has often talked about sitting in judgment of players with a history of problems.
Are they remorseful? Humbled? Determined to change?
Now, others will judge Keim on those same qualities via whatever outlet is at our disposal, including newspaper columns.
Our words shouldn’t matter to Keim. It’s far more important what a certain 12-year-old boy thinks.