A week after the Cardinals and Larry Fitzgerald announced that they had agreed on a new contract that would give the team some much-needed 2008 salary cap relief, the Cardinals are still, for now, on the hook for the $17 million base salary on Fitzgerald’s original deal.

The problem? According to Kent Somers of the Arizona Republic, Cardinals General Manager Rod Graves says the lawyers are still going over the “nitty-grittys” of the contract.

What, exactly, those “nitty-grittys” entail has not been explained. But while the contract is likely to get straightened out and become official sooner rather than later, the team’s failure to get the contract completed is already having consequences.

Per Somers, the Cardinals signed long snapper Nathan Hodel to a four-year deal because they thought the Fitzgerald contract was done, and that the new Fitzgerald deal would give them enough cap space to sign Hodel. But the Fitzgerald holdup put them in a position where they didn’t have the cap space, so the Cardinals released receiver Sean Morey.

Graves said the Cardinals plan to re-sign Morey when Fitzgerald’s contract becomes official within the next few days, and if they do, this snafu won’t have caused the Cardinals any problems. But it’s also possible that Morey will end up signing with another team, and that the Cardinals will then have lost a valuable member of their special teams.

And Somers also reports that the Fitzgerald situation has put the team’s pursuit of outside linebacker Brandon Chillar on hold. The Cardinals want Chillar now. They hope he’ll still be available when they have the cap room to sign him, after the Fitzgerald deal becomes official.