As we await the first episode of the Jets’ Hard Knocks series, it’s important to remember one truth while we argue over how welcoming (or not) the team should be to cameras: No team owes Hard Knocks anything.
It’s no secret that the Jets were less than welcoming to the idea of hosting Hard Knocks. ESPN reported some of the specifics earlier this week. I’ve heard from coaches who have, when approached by HBO in previous years, promised to make life so miserable for the documentary crew that they opted to go in a different direction. That level of disdain, while seemingly over the top, is understandable once you realize the finite edge that each of these clubs are scrambling for. Having a living, breathing miniseries being crafted about the inner workings of your franchise is most certainly a disadvantage. Not aiding in the creation of that miniseries is not defiance or fear or paranoia, it’s common sense.
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The media landscape is always changing. Tentpoles of the content industry that were once behemoths have to deal with the fact that each and every innovation has been adopted, monetized, farmed out or replaced. No athlete, coach, executive or equipment manager should have to provide candor just because previous participants on the show happened to be interesting and forthcoming (which is what made Hard Knocks popular in the first place). Once upon a time, Hard Knocks was an iconic, industry-leading entity buoyed by a generationally confident and star-studded Ravens team. They were totally unique, and there was no contemporary. Now, minus the voice of Liev Schreiber, most teams have their own in-house versions of a TV show, ones that provide the kind of content consistent with whatever the franchises are trying to get across. Just because HBO pays for that privilege doesn’t mean they should complain when they arrive at a facility and the doors aren’t wide open.
I have no idea why, exactly, the Jets don’t want to participate in Hard Knocks. But I can imagine that, if during a stressful time in my life, some producer showed up at my house with a bunch of cameras insistent on documenting the day-to-day rigors and emotional complexities of the Orr household, I would call the police, or, at the very least, insist they film me only reading Dostoyevsky (or trying to, anyway).
Robert Saleh is trying to do a lot this offseason: He has to bake in a new coaching staff, integrate a notoriously mercurial star quarterback who is blazing into the infamous cranky autumn of his football life, manage a very delicate situation with a spurned No. 2 pick who lost his job in Zach Wilson and keep everyone else in the building from resenting one another. Perhaps one of these powder-keg dynamics exists in a facility before the start of each season. But the Jets have an arsenal of detonatable kindling unlike anything we’ve seen in recent NFL memory.
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Some coaches may relish the opportunity to handle this out in the open. Saleh may not be one of them. He may, after having spent every waking hour of his life in that building trying to find a solution, have determined that his team is best suited for solitude. Why are we going to get upset about that?
As an aside, how fair is it to ask a coach—who maybe has four to five hours a day total to split between personal matters and sleep—to also help edit a documentary?
I realize this is a strange position to take as a journalist, but what HBO is doing isn’t journalism, not when you have a multiyear contract with the NFL. The Jets aren’t using players to bury dangerous chemicals or overthrow the Morris County School Board. There isn’t a public need to know.
Also, NFL teams purposely perform to a substandard degree on the field all the time. There are tanking attempts every year, some more visible than others. Does Amazon get to ask for its money back in December when the Cardinals decide to play the towel boy from Michigan at quarterback? Why is it at all controversial that the Jets want to essentially tank this season of Hard Knocks?
Ultimately, Saleh’s job is to win football games. Rodgers’s job is to move the offense efficiently. Each and every person in that building, on that roster, needs to relearn and recommit to their task at hand during a frantically truncated series of summer practices. There is no sensible argument that HBO would help them do that, in any conceivable way. If the Jets are not interesting and forthcoming, it’s the NFL’s problem. And if the league steps in to try to back their financial partner, they are actively sabotaging a team’s chances of success; one of the many ways (like the dissemination of a horribly cruel schedule) the league punishes teams at the expense of the almighty dollar.
When you interview people for a living, you quickly stop resenting a subject who isn’t magnanimous or engaging. Perhaps the day they talked to you was a horrible one. Maybe you (me), the interviewer, just has one of those annoying, punchable faces. Maybe their kids kept them up all night, or maybe they are having a difficult time with a loved one or a family member. Maybe they simply do not want to share their story with you. That is their decision (especially if a team or a brand or an agent, rather than the subject, facilitated the interview). I’ve gone from vilifying Marshawn Lynch for his podium indifference to now understanding it. And I’ve come a long way from (speaking of Zach Wilson) chiding someone for saying something that may seem unsavory on the surface without understanding some of the extenuating circumstances and emotions behind that moment.
It’s up to the man with the punchable face to find different angles, and ultimately make the story both true and entertaining enough for someone to spend time with.
This becomes HBO’s plight, just like the rest of the sports world trying to tell a good story in this chaotic football landscape. We can show up. We can try to tell a good story. We can sometimes win. But we cannot always guarantee cooperation, candor and a glance inside the doors people would like closed.
