The Heartbreak of Hard Knocks: Cardinals
Could this be the end of the mid-season series?
For a fan of the NFL and unscripted (“reality”) TV, there’s little better each year than Hard Knocks. For five weeks, the show follows a team in the pre-season and gets all the viewers watching to be hyped and overly optimistic about the team in question.
Starting last year, a new series started mid-season - I’ll admit I only partially watched the show about the Colts, and I couldn’t really figure out why I didn’t care as much. Part of it is that by the time that show airs, you have a sense for what that season is all about, and the mystery is lessened.
This season, the show is following the Arizona Cardinals and I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say it might be the death knell of the whole show. And that’s because I’ve never seen a less inspiring team in every single aspect.
That’s quite a statement for a veteran viewer of the show, for I have seen Dave Campo of the Cowboys (I couldn’t find a picture of him wearing socks and sandals).
I have seen Joe Philbin of the Dolphins.
And of course, I’ve seen Hue Jackson of the Browns (in a series that may have helped cost him his job).
But what’s happening this season is something else entirely. It’s not JUST that Kliff Kingsbury seems like he’s gotten his Xanax prescription wrong - he’s so low-key that I can’t understand how he’s possibly going to inspire ANYBODY. And what he’s saying is so … uninteresting and insipid. Oh, if you win all three facets of the game, the team will do well? AMAZING. If you win the next three games, the team will be right back in it? WHAT INSIGHT! How about HOW the team could do that? Where is it actually failing? What has to change? Nothing. Dial tone city.
And that trickles down to his coaches - usually in Hard Knocks there’s an assistant coach or coordinator (or a slew of them, as in Detroit) who are hilariously over-the-top in how passionate they are, screaming and laughing and running all over the field.
In Arizona? Nope. I can barely tell you what any of the other coaches look like, they’re all just quiet and boring as hell. To wit, the offensive line coach Sean Kugler was let go by the team after groping a woman in Mexico City, and I couldn’t even figure out who it was after watching two episodes of the show (including one that had a lot of time with the offensive line).
And this distasteful incident brings up another thing that isn’t really as obvious in the pre-season — what DOESN’T get shown on the TV show.
Earlier this year, the team surprisingly released RB Eno Benjamin who had been the backup and gotten a few starts when James Conner was banged up. Why? Who knows? It wasn’t disclosed publicly, nor even addressed whatsoever on the show.
And that pulls back the curtain on the show a bit. I mean, we always know we aren’t seeing EVERYTHING, but when there are public incidents that are so clearly scrubbed (in “fairness” the release of Kugler was mentioned at the end of episode 3 with zero context and a hard cut afterwards, which was quite literally the bare minimum required).
Then there’s Kyler Murray, the ‘star’ quarterback who just signed a massive contract extension (which no longer has a clause ensuring he actually studies the playbook) and who was out for the games featured in weeks 2 and 3 of the show with a hamstring injury.
Let’s talk about that injury - because we never really saw him even slightly limping, and instead saw him laughing it up on the sidelines during the 49ers game when the Cardinals got absolutely spit roasted. We saw him getting a massage and absolutely ignoring the trainer who is asking him legitimately questions about his leg … until he seems to remember the cameras are on him and mutters a few responses while never shifting his attention from his phone.
My entire takeaway is that Murray is soft, entitled and not someone a team has any interest in rallying behind. Indeed, they looked a lot more motivated when veteran backup Colt McCoy took the helm. Murray is not a leader at this point in his career, though he’s certainly an athletic marvel. And then there’s this, too:
Those last two weeks were two weeks that have been aired already on Hard Knocks. I don’t think I saw Kyler and Kliff exchange even a single sentence to each other - so yet again, what are we NOT seeing?
Another stud player, WR DeAndre Hopkins, returned after a six-game suspension for performance enhancing drugs to start the season. This was barely even acknowledged, and instead most of the discussion on Hopkins was about what a great player he is - and not what happened to keep him away from the team to start the year.
There are only two standout players who shine at all here, and one of course is J.J. Watt, who has never shied away from a camera but is also at the end of his career.
The other is safety Budda Baker who is in fact a true locker room leader and great player as well … but there’s only so much a safety can do.
So here we are - as a viewer who pays attention to the NFL, it’s clear what I’m not being shown. And given how bad it is what I am seeing - a moribund coaching staff, a malcontent QB and a team that seems to not only have no answers but isn’t even sure what the questions are … all I can think about is what is left on the cutting room floor? YIKES. Less specific to this franchise, I’ve never been so acutely aware of the team having “final cut” on a TV show, and that really taints the entire experience.
And that’s where I wonder if this season may cause every other team to refuse to participate in this series and/or cause HBO to wonder if their resources can be better spent elsewhere. Because if we’re not seeing what’s really going on, and the team can be exposed this much at the same time, what’s the benefit?
Well said.