Cardinals’ Hopkins: Kyler Murray ‘took a step’ after players-only meeting

The fallout of the Arizona Cardinals’ 42-34 win over the New Orleans Saints on Thursday Night Football included the reveal that the Cardinals had a players-only meeting.

A discussion between the roster took place some time after the ugly 19-9 loss to the Seattle Seahawks, the type of defeat that certainly warrants additional follow-ups on what went wrong and how to fix it before it becomes enough of a problem to ruin the season.

Wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins told Amazon’s postgame broadcast about it and it sounded like he was part of the brain trust behind putting it together.

One big takeaway was quarterback Kyler Murray’s leadership.

“I made sure Kyler was the first one to go up there and speak,” Hopkins said. “I feel like he needed to do that, the team needed to hear him and I feel like he took a step from last week to this week.”

Head coach Kliff Kingsbury obviously didn’t have much to provide the media with when it comes to details because of the whole, you know, players-only meeting part of the players-only meeting.

“I don’t have any moles in that deal,” he joked on Friday. “I could hear a little yelling as I was walking out so I think it was pretty intense. It was good to see the guys that I know probably spoke up backed it up — the Hop’s, the Budda’s (Baker) and the guys that were out there making big-time plays yesterday.”

As for what Hopkins had to say about Murray being the first one to address the team and kick the meeting off being a positive?

“Yeah, I think so,” Kingsbury said. “He’s the leader of this team and as we all know, as he goes we go. He’s that type of talent, that type of player and means that much to this football team. I think that was a big step.”

Follow @KellanOlson