CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Fifty-nine minutes after the Arizona Cardinals were eliminated from playoff contention, quarterback Kyler Murray walked out of the locker room, among the last people to leave Bank of America Stadium, and headed for his postgame press conference.
It was the last tile in a mosaic of defeat for the 7-8 Cardinals. Sunday's 36-30 overtime loss to the Carolina Panthers marked their fourth loss in the five weeks since their bye in Week 11, plummeting them from first place in the NFC West in Week 10 to out of the playoffs in Week 16.
The loss permeated throughout Arizona's locker room, from the players' faces to their body language to their words.
Running back DeeJay Dallas sat at his locker, expressionless at first. The more he looked back at the game, the more animated he became.
"Your just kind of numb," Dallas said. "I don't know, bro. I don't know. I can't even put it into words honestly. I mean, just kind of numb, bro. That's all I could really think of. That's the only emotion I feel right now. It's numb.
"All of our goals that we wanted to accomplish kind of got dashed in a matter of however many minutes we just played."
Dallas wasn't the exception.
"When you come up close like that, man, we're sick because we knew we could have came out with it, and, just, things didn't go our way," defensive lineman L.J. Collier said. "So, we're pretty beat up right now."
Arizona couldn't fully rebound from going down 20-3 halfway through the second quarter. They rallied twice, cutting the Panthers' lead to 20-17 in the final seconds of the first half and then coming back from being down 30-20 early in the fourth quarter to tying the game as regulation expired.
However, after holding the Panthers to a three-and-out on the first drive of overtime, the Cardinals couldn't get anything going. In an eight-play drive, they went backward 6 yards from the 10-yard line. Then, Panthers running back Chuba Hubbard ripped off runs of 28 and 21 yards, the latter going for the game-winning touchdown.
Collier said one of the Cardinals' goals Sunday was to keep Hubbard under 100 yards. He finished with 152, running away with Arizona's playoff aspirations in the process.
Gannon said missing the playoffs was an "external factor." To him, how Arizona responds on Tuesday will be telling.
"I know they're down," Gannon said. "I know that's real. Ultimately, when you reflect on it, we haven't done enough, you know what I mean? And it starts with me. So, we win together, we lose together. Everyone had their hand in how this season has went and why we are where we are and it starts with me."
And that's not easy to swallow, he said.
"It's a learning process, you know what I mean?" Gannon added. "And we got to take good hard looks in the mirror and improve and get better."
Throughout the season, the Cardinals subscribed to Gannon's philosophy that every game is a round and to take the year one round at a time. But on Sunday, Arizona was playing for its postseason lives. A loss and a Los Angeles Rams win over the New York Jets would be enough to eliminate the Cardinals.
It's exactly what happened.
Murray tried to explain what a team that's still in the middle of a rebuild can learn from missing the playoffs.
"I mean going forward we got to control what we can control and that's us coming to work every day playing the game of football, playing the game that we love and going out there and trying to win," Murray said.
Murray insisted the Cardinals fully understood how well Carolina (4-11) had been playing as of late. The notion of a trap game had been laughed off all week.
Gannon felt the Cardinals were ready based on the week of practice. Right tackle Kelvin Beachum felt Arizona was "more than capable" when it stepped on the field in Charlotte.
The Cardinals still have two games left: Saturday night in Los Angeles against the Rams (8 p.m. ET, NFL Network), and the season finale at home against the San Francisco 49ers, who are also eliminated from the playoffs.
"We put ourselves in the mess we're in, and we got to find a way to finish it the right way." Beachum said.
The short week will force the Cardinals to forget Sunday's game as quickly as possible. They're back on the field for practice Tuesday instead of Wednesday, so game planning will be on fast-forward.
"We're not going to give up, we're not going to waver," Collier said. "We're not going to go out there and lay down if that's what everybody's expecting because that's not us."