TEMPE, Ariz. -- Soon after Arizona Cardinals coach Bruce Arians announced to the media that safety Tyrann Mathieu had torn his ACL in Week 15 against Philadelphia, the 63-year-old walked into the training room, past safety Rashad Johnson and right up to Mathieu.
The two shared a brief moment, as trainers attended to Mathieu's right knee.
"It's personal with Ty," Arians said on Episode 6 of "All or Nothing," the eight-part Amazon Video series that chronicled the Cardinals' 2015 season. "We're extremely close, and all of us, but I love the kid. It's a very cold part of the business. We love and miss Ty, but we got to go on."
"We have a little different bond because of where he came from and where I came from," Arians added.
Mathieu's injury hit his teammates in different ways.
"I can't even stop thinking about it," cornerback Patrick Peterson, Mathieu's best friend, said at practice the week after.
Quarterback Carson Palmer, who's a veteran of two ACL surgeries, was on a stationary bike next to Mathieu when he asked the Honey Badger about his surgery and recovery timetable. Palmer was enthused when he calculated Mathieu's return could coincide with Week 1 of the 2016 regular season. But Palmer revealed a reflective side while processing the impact of Mathieu's injury.
"For him to get hurt, up 30 points, on a stupid pass that the other quarterback threw, that meant nothing in the game, just sucks," Palmer said. "It's just part of the trials and the tribulations of this team, and the trials and tribulations of his life. And we don't know why he would be taken away from this team in Week 16, in that game, when we need him the most going into Green Bay and Seattle. …
"There's no bigger loss we could have suffered."
What else we learned in Episode 6:
Probably the most poignant line of the entire series came from Arians toward the end of the episode. It was delivered in his kitchen, after he prepared a cocktail for himself and his wife, Chris, the day after the regular season ended. "Three-and-oh can change our life forever," Arians said.
Wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald did not have team president Michael Bidwill's phone number saved in his phone, so he apparently screened Bidwill's call when he tried to inform him of his Pro Bowl selection. "Program it in," Bidwill said. "It's like the ninth time."
The week after getting selected to his ninth Pro Bowl, Fitzgerald told cornerbacks coach Kevin Ross he had his eyes set on a Super Bowl ring and one more Pro Bowl. "I gotta get to 10," Fitzgerald said. "Only one other [wide receiver] got to 10. You know that? The great one." Fitzgerald was referring to Jerry Rice.
Outside linebacker Dwight Freeney can cook. Like really cook. He used his grandmother's recipe to make brown stew chicken and rice and peas for the linebackers room. It was quite the hit. "I'd jump offsides for this right here," Alex Okafor said. Said Markus Golden: "Best cooking football player in the NFL right there."
Freeney gave his fellow linebackers a lesson on his famous spin move. "I may not get the sack, guys, but I am setting him up. He doesn't even know it yet. That is the game within the game, because later on I start spinning on him. I have [gone] outside so much now I got him floating guys and I can beat him inside. I can try to make the plays before the plays happen." Freeney finished with this nugget: "It's chess, it ain't checkers."
Mathieu said rookie running back David Johnson reminded him of Marshall Faulk, "but bigger in a way."
Arians told general manager Steve Keim he wanted Red Bryant re-signed. It eventually happened.
Arians pulled back the curtain on former Giants coach Tom Coughlin the day after Coughlin resigned: "He doesn't have a hobby. Football is his life."
