Has 'Hard Knocks' finally run its course?
I’m a regular “Hard Knocks” viewer, like many NFL fans are. And the first episode this season, featuring the Los Angeles Rams, had me feeling something I hadn’t before.
I was checking the clock, wondering when it was going to be over.
I didn’t really care if the Rams got air conditioning in their dorm rooms. Aaron Donald’s Ping-Pong game didn’t hook me. Whether Jared Goff gets to meet Taylor Swift isn’t getting me to tune in next week. Listening to Jeff Fisher say he was “not [expletive] going 7-9 or 8-8 or 9-7, OK? Or 10-6 for that matter” was kind of funny because of this right here.
But overall? Meh.
The folks at NFL Films do a great job on just about everything, and “Hard Knocks” is tough. The turnaround for the show must be brutal. And it wasn’t terrible but it wasn’t any better or new than what we’ve seen the show do in previous years.
Is “Hard Knocks” fading? I assume HBO does good viewership for the series because it keeps coming back. But 15 years after the Baltimore Ravens’ groundbreaking turn on the first “Hard Knocks,” the show is up against a lot of challenges.
We’ve seen it all
The show’s paths are predictable. There would be the kooky character (it turns out it was center Eric Kush and all his tank tops), the yelling coach (defensive line coach Mike Waufle, a former Marine), the family who is constantly being uprooted (the Keenums) and the funny prank (Todd Gurley taking shaving cream to the face as he did an interview). The practice fight is coming up next week, don’t worry.
We also had the obligatory “guy getting cut” scene, but at least it had a twist: Receiver Deon Long was cut by Fisher for having a woman in his dorm room, breaking one of Fisher’s two rules (“be on time” was the other).
“What part of the rules, what part of ‘no female guests in the room’ did you not understand?” Fisher told Long, before cutting him.
That was good, but it wasn’t enough to carry an entire hour-long episode. There were other fun moments, like Fisher yelling at Tavon Austin for eating just two bananas at lunch and cramping up during practice, or Goff not knowing if the sun rose in the east or the west (Cal-Berkeley alums must have loved that).
Was anything else about this episode groundbreaking? Was watching Goff throw to receivers after practice all that gripping? After 15 years, we kind of know what’s coming.
The best teams aren’t going to do it
The Rams volunteered for “Hard Knocks,” which meant we missed an annual rite of passage: NFL teams letting it be known they want no part of the show. The NFL has some arbitrary rules to determine a pool of possible teams, and nobody seems to enjoy the process.
We’re probably never going to see a marquee team on “Hard Knocks” again. And it’s 2016 — star power sells. At least we had J.J. Watt when the Houston Texans were on last season. Rams running back Todd Gurley is a great player and maybe he’ll end up being a fun guy to track over the series. But the first episode didn’t give us much on him.
The Rams have been the epitome of average the past few years. They’re not exciting. You’d think that the move to Los Angeles would provide some fodder, but a few players watching a guy surf wasn’t getting it done. You’re not going to reinvigorate the series with the same type of teams on it all the time, and that’s probably what we’re stuck with.
There are many more options now
In 2001 and for most of its run, “Hard Knocks” was new and different. Now? You can probably turn on your TV and find a sports documentary on. Or, search your tablet for 30 seconds and find about 50 of them. Yesterday I watched two on Netflix (“Fastball” and “The Resurrection of Jake the Snake,” both very good by the way) and there are plenty more reality sports shows I haven’t caught up on yet like “Last Chance U.” The bar is being raised in the genre and sports documentaries are being produced at a rapid pace. “Hard Knocks” is a small part of a tidal wave, and it becomes tough to stand out when the episodes are predictable.
If you have Amazon Prime and haven’t seen “All or Nothing,” which followed the Arizona Cardinals through the 2015 season, watch that instead of “Hard Knocks.” It’s fresh, because it shows what happens during a season and gives a much better look at what happens behind the scenes. It’s with a fun, good team. It’s different. It’s better.
“All or Nothing” feels like what “Hard Knocks” used to be on the NFL landscape. After so many seasons, can “Hard Knocks” find its way out of this rut?
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Frank Schwab is the editor of Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at shutdown.corner@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
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