If you were hoping to waste some time on Thanksgiving Eve by reading a quick and dirty recap of a completely underwhelming episode of Hard Knocks In Season...you're in luck! All three of my kids are sleeping, my wife is exhausted and I'm just sitting here wondering if I'd actually eat grasshoppers at a restaurant.
- We get our opening scene of Steve Keim continuing his role as Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh if he were an NFL GM. Keim plays the "woe is me" card on keeping warm bodies around and how hard it will be but boy. Its crazy this is all just really, really bad luck and none of its self inflicted!
- Then we get a brief look at the WR room and there's a Robbie Anderson sighting! They didn't forget to pick him up at the airport after acquiring him. He's a real person!
- Colt McCoy gets the sit down interview treatment and full backstory treatment despite everyone knowing who is watching that Colt McCoy's storybook ending doesn't exist. This is like Game of Thrones doing a big 30 min back story on a character who just gets gratuitously killed off at the end of the episode.
- Next is Antonio Hamilton's turn for the sit down interview and full backstory treatment. This includes an actual reenactment of his cooking oil accident that is both incredibly compelling and completely relatable.
- More filler as the Hard Knocks crew is clearly struggling to generate storylines that don't paint this team as the flailing mess that it is. Now we get Will Hernandez's back story even though he's injured and hasn't played in a few weeks. Hernandez is originally from Mexico and the game is Mexico City has a special meaning to him and his family. Which is awesome but didn't require 20 minutes of air time.
- Colt McCoy is shown doing homework. Nothing to see here.
- Will Hernandez orders grasshoppers in a restaurant and I think I'd be game. Also, Hernandez has a buddy at dinner who looks EXACTLY like he could be a younger brother of Hernandez but is just in fact a friend.
- We get a 3 second, glossed over voice over explaining that OL coach Sean Kugler was sent home. Very disappointing. I obviously didn't expect to see what transpired and I understand the legal thorniness but we deserved to see Keim and or Kingsbury reacting to the news, at a minimum.
- A noble effort is made by the producers to turn the game action into a suspenseful, unpredictable competition and not the complete blow out it actually was.
- We see Kliff's VERY polished post game losing speech.
- And then some post-Kugler news publicly breaking content where Kliff decides to lecture the team for Kugler's irresponsible behavior and lump in their lack of effort to boot.
Star of the show: Kliff Kingsbury for all the wrong reasons.
Its increasingly clear the show and the team probably have some regrets on the choice to do this in Phoenix. The team is a mess, the season is a mess and the only storylines that could be compelling from this point forward probably won't be shown anyway.
Happy Thanksgiving!