Larry Fitzgerald will not be coming home to Minnesota in 2019

The chance of the veteran wide receiver joining the Minnesota Vikings this offseason vanished on Wednesday as he agreed to re-sign with the Arizona Cardinals.

For the past few seasons, fans of the Minnesota Vikings have been holding out hope that the team would somehow find a way to add All-Pro wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald to their roster.

Fitzgerald, a Minnesota native, was scheduled to become a free-agent this offseason and some believed the possibility of him landing with the Vikings was as high as it has ever been before. However, any hope of the receiver playing for his hometown team quickly disappeared on Wednesday.

Fitzgerald has announced that he does not plan to retire from the NFL and it was revealed on Wednesday that he and the Arizona Cardinals have agreed to a new, one-year contract. It will be his 16th season with the Cardinals since the team drafted him in 2004.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Fitzgerald has opted to remain in Arizona, but his decision is still a bit disappointing.

Whether he chose to sign with Minnesota or not, it would have been nice to see the veteran receiver join an organization that has a better chance to win a championship in 2019 than a Cardinals team that is coming off a 3-13 season. Fitzgerald has only been apart of a playoff roster in four of his 15 years in Arizona.

But he obviously loves playing for the Cardinals and at his age (35-years-old), uprooting his family from a place where they have been for more than a decade is not the easiest decision in the world to make.

While it would have been wonderful to see Fitzgerald as a member of the Vikings in 2019, the veteran receiver finishing his NFL career in an Arizona uniform is clearly something that is very important to him.