Arizona Cardinals coach Bruce Arians cancels final minicamp practice

TEMPE, Ariz. -- Arizona Cardinals head coach Bruce Arians was so impressed with the way his team practiced after two days of its scheduled three-day mandatory minicamp that he excused all veteran players for the rest of summer until they report to training camp on July 28.

"There's so much competition on this football team right now; that's what I just talked to them about," he said. "We have more than 53. We've got probably 65 that I'm very comfortable with. And it's going to be that you can't have a bad day, especially in certain position groups.

"You just can't have a bad day. You'll fall too far behind."

Arians referenced several positions, including the tight-end group featuring Jermaine Gresham, Darren Fells, Troy Niklas and Ifeanyi Momah.

"I've never been around a tight-end room that is as talented as this one," he said. "We had Heath Miller in Pittsburgh, but we didn't have four guys like we have here."

Arians won his veteran players over in a big way when he cancelled the third day of mandatory minicamp, informing them they had done enough in two days to have the last day off.

"It's nice to get these breaks and be rewarded for hard work and attendance and all the things we were rewarded for," quarterback Carson Palmer said.

Meanwhile, there might have been another method to Arians' decision about the final scheduled day of minicamp. He, his staff and many of his players spent Thursday in Los Angeles where they were preparing to watch the docu-series "All or Nothing" later that night.

The eight-episode series, an Amazon original series produced by NFL Films, features the 2015 Cardinals season with behind-the-scenes footage from training camp through the NFC Championship Game. The series will be released on July 1.

"I got used to having a microphone on every day," Arians said, "You'll be able to tell I didn't change any. I'll get a few bibles in the mail, I'm sure, and rightfully so."

Quarterback Carson Palmer envisions the docu-series won't be the last of its kind.

"I was talking to (team president) Michael Bidwill the other day and was like, 'Everybody is going to do this now. Why wouldn't they?'

"I'm most excited for 2038 when I can show my kids and grandkids and my wife and I can look back and remember that year. It's just kind of cool to kind of have a yearbook, or whatever you want to call it, to go back and watch at some point way down the road."