All or Nothing: A Season with the Arizona Cardinals, Episode 1
By Scott Allen
Amazon’s all-access series ‘All or Nothing’ featuring the Arizona Cardinals and their journey in 2015
Never before has any NFL team give access to a video crew for an entire football season. Sure we’ve had Hard Knocks on HBO. That shows the journey of training camp and the preseason.
This unprecedented look at the Arizona Cardinals and their drive to the ultimate goal of winning the Super Bowl gives us all sides of players, coaches, and personnel. You think you know everything about the Cardinals, well, that changes immediately in episode one of this eight-part series.
The episode starts with how the Cardinals got to where they were at the start of 2015 season. The video crew takes us inside the draft war room at Cardinals headquarters in Tempe. They show us the decisions that went into drafting running back David Johnson.
Turns out David Johnson wasn’t their first choice. Ameer Abdullah from Nebraska was about to be a Cardinals running back. However the Detroit Lions swooped in and drafted him. Enter David Johnson.
The Cardinals knew immediately what they had in Johnson though. Head coach Bruce Arians mentions how much Johnson is like Andre Ellington, except bigger. This was something many Cardinals fans noticed right away.
After game one of the season in which the Cardinals defeated the New Orleans Saints 31-19, the discussion focuses back on Johnson in a meeting with front office staff prior to the following game against the Chicago Bears. Arians mentions how Johnson is being given more and more each week to do (a prophecy fulfilled in the Bears game). He tells team president Michael Bidwill how by Thanksgiving Johnson will be a “bell cow” by Thanksgiving. Wow, how right he was.
Next scene we see Johnson at home with his them fiancee Meghan (they are now married) and his dog, Emmitt. He named his dog after the great Emmitt Smith. How great is that?
Week two brings the great road victory against the Bears. A couple of firsts took place for the Cardinals. Johnson became the first player in NFL history to score a touchdown by reception, kickoff return, and rushing in his first two games.
Then it was the Larry Fitzgerald Show. Fitz caught three touchdown passes in the game. He had never caught that many in one game, a statistic that surprised many of us. It broke a nine-game touchdown-less streak for Fitz.
As the episode nears it’s end, the crew documents how little time players get with their families during the season. Saturday’s are family day. All families are invited to practice.
The last few minutes of the episode are dedicated to the whipping the Cardinals gave the San Francisco 49ers 47-7 at University of Phoenix Stadium. They start the season 3-0. However as Arians reminds us more than once, “We ain’t shit yet”.