Arizona
Hard Knocks embarks on Arizona Cardinals at pivotal point in season
TEMPE — Lights, cameras, Exhausting Knocks.
In lower than per week, we are going to get our first actual behind-the-scenes look contained in the 2022 Arizona Cardinals when their season of HBO’s Exhausting Knocks debuts subsequent Wednesday.
No extra ready for 30-second trailers of gamers figuring out or coaches wanting clicking by way of sport movie to drop.
However whereas the Exhausting Knocks: In Season premiere date is true across the nook, that doesn’t imply the HBO cameras are simply getting rolling.
For a majority of the season, further cameras, mics and our bodies have been noticed all through the coaching facility and through video games.
The sequence is nice in shedding mild on the innerworkings of a crew and the gamers who make it up. It provides followers a special perspective of what really goes on behind closed doorways.
It may additionally give just a little an excessive amount of.
“They do an awesome job of form of laying within the shadows and also you don’t discover it a lot — virtually to a fault,” head coach Kliff Kingsbury mentioned Wednesday. “You’ll say some issues that possibly might get you canceled and need to form of give them the ‘OK, that’s out,’ nevertheless it doesn’t interrupt something. They do an awesome job with it.”
“I hate watching myself do something, so I gained’t watch it, however I’m excited for followers to see the kind of individuals we’ve,” the top coach added. “I do know they do some behind the scenes with households and origin tales and issues like that. We’ve some nice tales on our crew.”
Kingsbury isn’t the one one who must be minding his Ps and Qs, both. Along with the top coach getting mic’d up and filmed on the common, the identical goes for the gamers.
Some, like quarterback Kyler Murray, haven’t had the cameras comply with him exterior the coaching facility simply but. Though, the sign caller did sport a mic on Wednesday.
There are actually extra eyeballs on Murray and the remainder of the crew, however he’s maintaining it enterprise as normal together with his eye set on the Seattle Seahawks.
“I wouldn’t say it modifications you,” Kyler Murray mentioned. “I simply assume you’ve simply received to know when you may say stuff. You’ve simply received to be good. Any person’s at all times watching. You by no means actually need to give anyone something unhealthy to say about you. It’s nothing new for me. It’s form of how I used to be raised. Deal with individuals the way you need to be handled.”
If you have a look at how this season has progressed for Arizona, selecting up the crew right now brings with it a heightened degree of intrigue.
Looking at a 3-5 mark coming into a Week 9 matchup in opposition to a Seahawks crew driving a three-game win streak, Arizona wants a win to remain aggressive within the NFC West with the Los Angeles Rams and San Francisco 49ers on the schedule the subsequent two weeks.
One of many greatest points for Arizona has been taking part in from behind. Per Kingsbury, the crew has trailed 91% of the time by way of the primary eight weeks of the season. Arizona has held some kind of a lead for a median of six minutes per sport.
“We predict our greatest soccer is out in entrance of us and it must be these subsequent three weeks in opposition to three actually good opponents,” Kingsbury mentioned.
Curiously sufficient, the Cardinals discover themselves in an analogous spot as the primary Exhausting Knocks: In Season crew, the Indianapolis Colts. Becoming a member of the present at 3-5 — the identical mark as Arizona — Indianapolis proceeded to go 6-1 earlier than a pair of losses ended its playoff hopes.
Taking the subsequent two or three video games will hold the Cardinals squarely within the hunt for the division. Dropping a number of may very well be the demise sentence for this iteration of Arizona. Only a loss to Seattle would transfer Arizona three video games again of the division leaders, who would additionally maintain the tie breaker over the Cardinals.
And it doesn’t matter what, the Exhausting Knocks cameras shall be proper there to catch all of it. Good and unhealthy.