Has the NFL docuseries Hard Knocks run its course? Pat McAfee and his crew think that’s the case.
On Thursday’s edition of The Pat McAfee Show, the question of which team would be featured for the training camp edition of the series came up. The general consensus was that among the five teams the league could force to participate, the New York Jets made the most sense to be featured, mainly because the team went out and acquired quarterback Aaron Rodgers from the Packers.
But that gave way to co-host Ty Schmidt making the point that regardless of what team gets voluntold to allow NFL Films cameras into training camp, the series just doesn’t have the same luster it had when it first debuted.
“Hard Knocks hasn’t been worth a shit in several years,” Schmidt said.
Pat went on to say that Ty’s line of thinking is backed up by the fact that nowadays every team seems to find a way to create and post their own Hard Knocks-esque content on platforms like Twitter.
“You’re saying since social media teams have been doing their own Hard Knocks pretty much all year round,” McAfee said.
“It’s lost steam over the years,” co-host AJ Hawk added.
When the series first launched, football fans were enamored with the fact that a team like the Dallas Cowboys allowed cameras into team and coach meetings, including owner and general manager Jerry Jones making decisions to cut players and even recording the moments those players were told they were being released.
McAfee said that was what drummed up so much interest, combined with the fact that NFL Films could create compelling television with the footage. NFL Films isn’t the reason fans have kind of tuned the series out, McAfee said.
“The access was what everybody loved so much. And the way NFL Films tells a story is obviously fantastic so let’s not get that twisted,” he said.
Schmidt and McAfee both brought up the NFL releasing a trailer on Wednesday for a new Netflix series chronicling the lives of league quarterbacks, saying that what may need to happen is pivoting toward series like that and away from the Hard Knocks format.
“But whenever you’re getting so much content already from the spots now at this point – we weren’t then – now at this point, it does make you think like are they gonna have to dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodge their way through this era of content to separate themselves,” Pat said. “And the quarterback one feels like the right answer.”
