As news regarding the New York Jets being forced to appear on the NFL Films and HBO documentary series Hard Knocks circulated earlier this week, various former players and media personalities are reflecting on what the experience was like for them. During production days, cameras follow different players around the practice facility to document their experience and create a storyline, and ultimately craft an episode.
The first season of the show featured the Baltimore Ravens. Hard Knocks televised quarterback Tim Hasselbeck being cut from the team and granting fans never before seen footage of a difficult moment.
Hasselbeck, a current ESPN and ACC Network football analyst, had been cut from the Buffalo Bills a few weeks earlier. While his career continued largely in a backup role, the timing of being cut and then having the footage air made the circumstance all the more difficult. Dan Patrick, asked Hasselbeck if he had any say in the footage being aired, to which he replied he did not.
“I’m sitting there and Brian Billick’s like, ‘Hey man, this doesn’t mean it’s forever, but it’s just not with us,’” Hasselbeck recalled on Wednesday. “To make it worse – literally to make it worse – I don’t know if it was scripted to totally humiliate me. There was a big van; like a coach bus that probably seats 65 people. I rode it by myself to the airport. I was like, ‘How much salt do you want to pour into the wound, fellas?’”
Both Hasselbeck and Patrick understand the entertainment value behind fans being able to gain access to parts of the team and areas within the practice facility that are typically off limits to the media. Yet in his being cut, the show gained early experience pertaining to how to handle challenging, somewhat disheartening moments.
“Is there an easier way to cut people or a worse way to cut people?,” Patrick wondered. “It’s TV, and they’re trying to make good TV, and I’m sure it was good TV.”
“I actually knew I wasn’t going to make the team,” Hasselbeck replied. “It was Randall Cunningham, Elvis Grbac [and] Chris Redman was there. I was a camp arm for sure.”
With the Jets likely to appear on the next season of Hard Knocks, how the program tackles difficult moments will surely be on the minds of those who have previously been on the show. The fact that Hasselbeck had low expectations probably softened the blow, even having asked quarterback coach Matt Cavanaugh when he was going to be cut from the team. Cavanaugh had played professionally on the New York Giants with Hasselbeck’s father, Don, and maintained a relationship with him in retirement. Nonetheless, he is not sure if there is any method to cutting a player on television that would make the moment any less distressing.
“I knew I was out,” Hasselbeck affirmed, “but I still don’t know if there’s an easier way to do it.”
