Hard Knocks finale goes behind scenes on Kliff Kingsbury’s firing, J.J. Watt’s last game
The final episode of HBO’s and NFL Films’ “Hard Knocks – In Season with the Arizona Cardinals” was broadcast Wednesday night, and as epic as the chronicling of the last week of J.J. Watt’s career was, what everyone also wanted to see was how the program would tell the end of coach Kliff Kingsbury’s tenure.
“Hard Knocks” didn’t disappoint, even though the series didn’t always pull back the curtains as much as fans were hoping to see.
Before he was fired on Monday morning by team owner Michael Bidwill, the cameras caught Kingsbury addressing the team in the locker room at Levi’s Stadium following the Cardinals’ 38-13 loss to the 49ers, dropping them to 4-13 on the season.
“I’m disappointed for y’all, for y’all, because I know what you deserve,” Kingsbury told his players. “It just didn’t work this year, but it will! This year happened for us, not to us, and we’re going to learn from it and be better moving forward, I promise y’all.
“But I cannot tell you how much it meant to me how y’all (expletive) worked and showed up each and every week, man. It meant everything to me, so thank y’all.”
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At the end of the show, following passages from Bidwill’s Monday news conference announcing the dismissal of Kingsbury and the resignation of general manager Steve Keim, “Hard Knocks” showed a brief clip of Kingsbury addressing some of his players yet again in the auditorium at the team’s Tempe training facility.
He tells them what most of them have already heard: A change has been made.
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“Hard Knocks” filmed Hopkins and linebacker Zaven Collins in a pottery studio and later filmed Hopkins at his home alone talking about Arizona’s disappointing season. He said his six-game suspension to start the year for testing positive for traces of PEDs was a big part of it.
“I was out six games and I feel like that kind of put us behind right there,” he said. “I have to take accountability for that. I gave my team a disadvantage from the jump. … It was a very (expletive) season. … The season has been (expletive) up.”
The most dramatic part of the “Hard Knocks” final episode, though, was snippets during the 49ers’ game and the pre- and postgame scenes featuring Watt, his teammates, and time with his wife, Kealia, and their newborn son, Koa.
The crescendo was cameras inside the team meeting room Saturday night at the hotel in which a video tribute made by defensive line coach Matt Burke was played for Watt and the entire team. It only lasted about six minutes, but Watt was sobbing seconds into it upon watching his brother, T.J., the All-Pro outside linebacker for the Steelers, explaining how much his big brother helped him on his way.