Highlights from Wednesday night's 'Hard Knocks – in Season with the Arizona Cardinals'

The biggest highlight from the latest episode of HBO’s and NFL Films’ “Hard Knocks – In Season with the Arizona Cardinals” Wednesday night wasn’t about the season-ending knee injury to starting quarterback Kyler Murray during Monday night’s 27-13 loss to the visiting Patriots.

It was what was said by head coach Kliff Kingsbury to his team after the game at State Farm Stadium as the Cardinals fell to 4-9 were officially eliminated from any hopes of reaching the playoffs.

“I made some (expletive) calls,” he tells his players in the locker room, adding of all the team’s self-inflicted mistakes, “But the basic (expletive) that we know how to do, it means a lot in these games. It’s hard to overcome and it continues to happen. It’s getting it right in practice and holding each other accountable.

“I treat you like men. That’s how it’s going to be. That may be a fault of mine, but I’m going to treat you like (expletive) men, so we’ve got to hold each other accountable somehow the last month because we’re better than that (expletive). You understand that? That’s it. We’re better and that’s all I want to see for the rest of this last month – play your best football because I love being round you guys, I love coming to work every day with you, you practice hard and you fight your ass off for each other, but we have to do it (expletive) right because we’re giving (expletive) away.”

Once Kingsbury was finished speaking, the show caught veteran safety Chris Banjo and running back James Conner chiming in with their own impassioned takes to the team and it only brought fans closer into the situation behind the scenes.

“We got some good coaches and like he said, he treats us like men!” Banjo yelled. “Be a (expletive) man and respect the (expletive) game, straight up. Plain and (expletive) simple.”

Conner jumped in and tried to empower his teammates to keep bringing their best effort, saying, “It’s got to come to an end, yo. It’s got to come to an end. Realize it, be blessed. But what we’re not going to do is sit and bitch about this and that.”

The production crew didn’t have enough time to document Wednesday afternoon’s surprising news development about General Manager Steve Keim taking a leave of absence for health-related purposes. It did touch briefly on quarterback Kyler Murray’s non-contact knee injury on the third play from scrimmage Monday night, which resulted in a torn ACL and him being lost for the next several months.

There were a few other poignant moments from Episode No. 6, however, including in the beginning when Kingsbury revealed he feels like he might not have given his best effort upon launching his pro career as a former sixth-round draft pick of the Patriots in 2003. He spent parts of four seasons with five NFL teams before spending his final years in the Canadian Football League.

Because of that, he said, he tries to give his all as a coach, explaining why he arrives at the Cardinal’s Tempe training facility as early as 4:30 a.m. every day.

“I think it’s for me a fear of I didn’t do my best or do my all,” Kingsbury said in a very telling scene.

Other highlights included a dramatic ongoing sequence involving wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins and his mother, Sabrina Greenlee, who was left blinded in 2002 during an attack by a jealous woman who threw a toxic chemical in her face that nearly took her life.

The best part might have been Hopkins convincing his mom that she needed to come to his games whether she could see or not and how that motivated her to get outside and be around people again. Greenlee was in attendance on Monday night, which the “Hard Knocks” crew chronicled repeatedly, even when Hopkins lost a fumble that the Patriots returned for a touchdown to help sink the Cardinals.

“I lost the game. I let them get the momentum,” the cameras caught Hopkins saying on the sideline. “It’s on me.”

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Postgame speeches highlight latest 'Hard Knocks' episode on Cardinals