Tuesdays with Tom: A Hard Knocks Life
We’re in the dog days of summer and for many football fans that means we’re only one month away from real football. Of course, right now we have some exhibition football to watch if you so choose. Particularly in the NFL, the preseason is an annual song and dance fans have grown to loathe. It’s mostly not worth watching, but many years ago the NFL tried drumming up some human interest in the pre-season and also provide a glimpse into the inside world of the NFL. Enter HBO’s Hard Knocks series. If you’re not familiar with this, every year HBO cameras follow around an NFL team inside the locker room, practices and all things that were previously considered off-limits to the public. For the five weeks of the pre-season, they air these real-time made 60-minute episodes to showcase the players, coaches and family members of an NFL team. I should mention that this series has already been surpassed by Amazon’s All or Nothing, which launched in 2016 and follows an NFL team for an entire year. But Hard Knocks has a longer track record and it’s more timely. Even if you don’t like football, you might find this slightly uncensored look at professional athletes appealing to watch.
Last Tuesday, the first episode of this current season premiered. They’re featuring the Cleveland Browns, a large departure for a show that typically features up-and-coming or good teams. The Browns are universally considered the worst franchise in American professional sports right now. I’ll talk more about them later on, but the topic got me thinking about past seasons of the show and how the team ended up faring as a result of this unfettered training camp access. Many teams refuse to participate and risk sharing their so-called secrets. Does the show have an impact on performance? I went back the last 10 years to find out.
Dallas Cowboys - 2008
Summary: While the show officially launched in 2001 and ran two seasons, there was a brief 5-year hiatus before returning in 2007 to chronicle the Kansas City Chiefs. Truthfully though, the more hyped return of the show was the 2008 Cowboys. While always popular around the country, the Cowboys came into 2008 off a 13-3 season the year prior and a rather shocking home playoff loss to the eventual ‘07 Super Bowl champion and division rival New York Giants. As a result, there was even more hype around this annually over-hyped team. This was the team’s second appearance on the show.
Highlights: Despite the fanfare, there weren’t too many memorable moments from the season. One of the staples of the show is showcasing bottom of the roster players. In this case, this season gave fans a close look at then-unknown players TE Martellus Bennett and undrafted WR Danny Amendola. Bennett is now retired after a colorful, solid career in the league. Amendola bounced around the NFL before finding a home with the Patriots and now currently the Dolphins. Both players overcame their reputations to create long NFL careers. Adam “Pacman” Jones was also trying to save his NFL career after multiple run-ins with the law.
Final Record: 9-7, 3rd Place in NFC East, No Playoffs. The team got worse in every facet. So, hard to argue this worked out well for the Cowboys on the field. But they are masters at staying in the national spotlight so they got the job done there as usual.
Cincinnati Bengals - 2009
Summary: After 6 years of mediocrity and three years removed from a lone playoff loss, the Bengals surprisingly retained head coach Marvin Lewis after a 4-11-1 2008 campaign. Nine years later, the Bengals once again retained Lewis after eight more years of playoff heartbreak and disappointment. Nothing changes! Lewis is only coach to go 0-7 in the playoffs in NFL history. I digress. They were a surprising choice for the show, but were not short on wild characters. The biggest of the bunch being WR Chad Ochocinco. Formerly known as Chad Johnson, Ochocinco legally changed his name to the Spanish translation of “8” “5”. Technically, he should have been Ochenta y cinco, but linguistic accuracy wasn’t the point. They might not have been good, but they did make for good entertainment.
Highlight: Chad Ochocinco is unquestionably the MVP of the season. There was some interesting stuff between QB Carson Palmer and his backup QB brother Jordan Palmer. Talk about knowing your place. Pacman Jones arrived on the scene to join the long list of Marvin Lewis Bengals with criminal records. There was also a four-player full-back battle which tells you how far away the current NFL is from 2009. Oh, Ochocinco also kicked a game winning extra point in the preseason. It’s a good thing Chad had his moments here because he’d later appear on the show in a very different light.
Final Record: 10-6, 1st Place in AFC North, First Round Playoff Loss. I have to admit the Bengals made out big with this Hard Knocks entry. They were interesting, funny and had their best season in four years afterwards. Of course they lost in the first round because that’s what they always do!
New York Jets - 2010
Summary: The 2010 New York Jets were made for television. Head coach Rex Ryan was a nonstop quote machine. The team was riding high off an AFC Championship game appearance the previous year. They were the media darlings of the league and made no effort to hide from it. They had a promising young franchise QB in Mark Sanchez, an elite defense, a roster full of stars and personalities and they were a trendy Super Bowl pick. You couldn’t have asked for a better situation to put cameras in front of at the time.
Highlight: There were too many of them. Rex kicked it off with the tone-setting team speech that’s probably the greatest moment in Hard Knocks history. Any speech that ends with “Let’s go eat god-damn snack!” is an immediate classic. The staff had some future NFL head coaches. Darrelle Revis, at the time the best defensive back in the league, held out for most of camp creating storylines every day. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the infamous Antonio Cromartie interview. The Jets defensive back attempted to name all nine of his children and struggled to do so. Not only did he have nine kids in 2010, he has four more now and two of them came AFTER he got a vasectomy. He’s the most fertile NFL player ever!
Final Record: 11-5, 2nd Place in AFC East, Lost 2010 AFC Title Game. The Jets didn’t shy away from the attention that surrounded their season. It worked out for them, eventually falling to a far superior franchise in the Pittsburgh Steelers. It’s the biggest moment the Jets have had since Joe Namath won Super Bowl III.
Miami Dolphins - 2012
Summary: After another one year break due to the 2011 NFL Lockout, Hard Knocks took their talents to South Beach to follow the Dolphins. There was nothing remarkable about this team or the 2011 season that preceded it. The most notable thing for them was hiring a new coach, Joe Philbin, and drafting a first round QB in Ryan Tannehill. Both turned out to be frustratingly boring people. Their GM Jeff Ireland was most well-known for asking Dez Bryant if his mother was a prostitute. They tried to make a splash by signing Chad Johnson (he ditched Ochocinco shortly before) who was a far cry from his prime years. It was a strange team.
Highlight: Honorable mention to Ryan Tannehill not knowing how the NFL divisions work. He thought the Dolphins were in the NFC East. But believe it or not this boring team supplied two of the craziest moments in the history of the show. The first one being Jeff Ireland trading their top cornerback Vontae Davis to the Colts. Davis seemed completely unphased by the life-altering news. He asked Ireland if he could call his grandmother as Ireland was explaining his next steps. It was hilarious. Not as funny but equally compelling was Philbin cutting Chad Johnson. After one listless year in New England, Johnson tried to make the Dolphins squad on his last legs. But a domestic violence allegation against him mid-camp forced the team to cut him and the interaction was captured by Hard Knocks. It was brutal to watch and Johnson never played again. Jerry Glanville once said the NFL stands for “Not For Long” and boy did Johnson prove that right four years after being Hard Knocks MVP.
Final Record: 7-9, 2nd Place in AFC East, No Playoffs. The Dolphins missed the playoffs for the ninth straight season. They wouldn’t make it again for another four years. Had the cameras stuck around the next season, they would have seen the infamous Richie Incognito-Jonathan Martin bullying scandal. But they didn’t. Tannehill is still around today and has made upwards of $70 million playing average to below average football.
Cincinnati Bengals - 2013
Summary: They’re back!! The Bengals became the second team to appear multiple times on the show in 2013. This time they were riding somewhat high off the 3rd first round playoff loss in the Marvin Lewis era. They had much better long-term prospects. A stable young QB in Andy Dalton, a franchise WR who couldn’t be less like Chad Johnson in AJ Green, a quality defense with young talent and had just signed away OLB James Harrison from the rival Steelers. Things were going pretty well for them.
Highlight: Despite Cincinnati’s improved franchise stability, the Bengals second stint on Hard Knocks lacked the entertainment value of their first appearance in 2009. A lot of attention was paid to OLB Aaron Maybin. Maybin flamed out as a first round pick with the Buffalo Bills, had a brief run with the Jets and by 2013 his NFL career was on life support. The series showcased his art career that simultaneously served as a reminder of how boring the show was and a lense into the off-field lives of NFL players. Dalton and Green weren’t camera-friendly personalities. Ironically, the star of the season might have been James Harrison. Harrison despised the presence of the HBO cameras but they made him a frequent subject anyways. He was warming up for his future act as a workout legend on Instagram and owning the corner of Grumpy Old Asshole in NFL lore.
Final Record: 11-5, 1st Place in AFC East, First Round Playoff Loss. The show had no lingering effect on the Bengals. They made the playoffs for the third straight year and lost in the first round for the third straight year. They found up doing that five years in a row and to this day, Marvin Lewis’s consistent staying power as head coach is more perplexing than your average Chicago politician.
Atlanta Falcons - 2014
Summary: The previous 2013 season for the Falcons was a train wreck. They went from 13-3 and in the NFC Championship game to 4-12 with their head coach Mike Smith firmly in the hot seat. QB Matt Ryan and WR Julio Jones headlined the roster, which was bereft of signature talent or any kind of talent really on the defense. For a team that plays in a major media market, the Falcons are not hugely popular or well known to the average NFL fan. They have a bleak history pre-Michael Vick.
Highlight: One of the underrated perks of being featured on Hard Knocks is players and coaches alike can knowingly show off for the cameras in hopes of improving their reputation in NFL circles. They didn’t do that. I honestly forgot about them when looking back at this list. Particularly Mike Smith, who did nothing to suggest he was not the milquetoast head coach everyone already believed he was. On the flip side, special teams coach Keith Armstrong had a handful of passionate moments. Watching him rip into then-rookie Devonta Freeman for whiffing on a punt-team block is pretty hilarious in hindsight. Freeman is now one of the top running backs in the league and will never see another special team down in his life. Defensive line coach Bryan Cox was a delight too. In a film session with his players, he went through photos of his family and told his players he lost his virginity at age 10.
Final Record: 6-10, 3rd Place in NFC South, No Playoffs. Technically, they won two more games vs. the previous season. But they still missed the playoffs and Smith was fired at the end of the year. Things have been much better since. They’ve made the playoffs two of the last three years, including a historically great offensive year in 2016 that led them to a commanding lead 28-3 in the fourth quarter in Super Bowl LI over the New England Patriots. Whoops!!
Houston Texans - 2015
Summary: After a few relatively bland seasons, the Houston Texans arrived in 2015 to change the paradigm. As the youngest franchise in the NFL, you’d be hard-pressed to find a non-NFL fan who knows much about the Texans. Luckily this team had a bevy of intriguing storylines for the viewers. Defensive tackle J.J. Watt took the main stage for the team. They had a legitimate QB controversy between two awful options in Brian Hoyer and Ryan Mallett. Jadeveon Clowney was rehabbing after an injury-lost rookie year. There was plenty of things to look forward too.
Highlight: For better or worse, it was the J.J. Watt show all season long. The clips of him working several hours after practice engendered celebration and fueled the fire for people who think he is a complete phony. Head coach Bill O’Brien served as a Rex Ryan lite for great sound bites. Most notably when he told Ryan Mallett he was benched for showing up late to practice all the time. Mallett blamed it on his alarm clock, then later missed a team flight in protest for being benched. It was hilarious. Even funnier was mammoth defensive tackle Vince Wilfork showing up to practice in nothing but overalls and a cowboy hat. The Texans put on quite a show.
Final Record: 9-7, First Place in AFC South, First Round Playoff Loss. This worked out well for them. Somehow they’ve made the playoffs many times with horrendous QB play and Watt has struggled mightily with injuries since. But at the time, they were riding pretty high for a franchise of only 12 years.
Los Angeles Rams - 2016
Summary: Much to the chagrin of the St. Louis community, the newly minted Los Angeles Rams were selected as the Hard Knocks team to document the cross country move to their new city. That is enough of a plotline to live by but throw in an Internet punching bag of a head coach, the No. 1 overall pick rookie QB and a handful of personalities and you get a promising outlook for TV.
Highlight: Without a doubt it is Jeff Fisher’s speech about not going 7-9. It’s well established that Jeff Fisher’s long NFL career as a head coach often ended with a mediocre record. With the cameras on, Fisher seemed to be exercising those demons with a direct acknowledgment that he can’t afford to be 7-9 again. This is exactly the kind of content HBO executives dream of capturing on film and to this day, I am completely delighted by it. Another moment of comedy was DE Williams Hayes discussing that he doesn’t believe that dinosaurs existed, but does believe that mermaids exist today. For a pretty terrible team, they certainly checked off the entertainment boxes every week.
Final Record: 4-11-1, 3rd Place in NFC West, No Playoffs. This couldn’t have gone worse on the field. They struggled all year long and QB Jared Goff was a historically bad rookie. They were so bad that the team fired Fisher with three games left in the season. That moment was captured by Amazon cameras on the All or Nothing series. That’s right: they were both on Hard Knocks and that show in the same season. You can relive every inside moment of the 2016 Los Angeles Rams for the rest of time. One year later, the Rams are one of the hottest teams in the NFL. Talk about bad timing!
Tampa Bay Buccaneers - 2017
Summary: The Bucs were a classic choice for Hard Knocks. They seemed up-and-coming, they had interesting young players, a newish head coach ripe for the spotlight. They seemed poised for a playoff appearance after going 9-7 in 2016. Tampa Bay was a team hungry for success in the present after showing little of it in their past.
Highlight: It says a lot about this season that one of the most memorable moments was the team cutting kicker Robert Aguayo. The Bucs shockingly traded up into the second round for Aguayo in 2016 and after one horrendous rookie year and an even worse training camp, they cut him on the show. It was an embarrassing look for the team. Even worse was the understandable focus on QB Jameis Winston. Winston did nothing to change the perception that he is an entitled, bombasatic brat. He didn’t handle criticism well and belittled teammates who struggled on the field. On a brighter note, DT Gerald McCoy was outstanding and funny. Jon Gruden also made an appearance that clearly showed he was dying to coach football again. He took the Raiders job about four months later.
Final Record: 5-11, 4th Place in NFC South, No Playoffs. The Buccaneers didn’t live up to their preseason hype. Winston didn’t play well and now his future with the team is in major jeopardy. Head coach Dirk Koetter enters this year as one of the coaches on the hot seat. At least they still have Gerald McCoy.
Cleveland Browns - 2018
Summary: The 2017 Browns were the second team in NFL history to go 0-16. In the Hue Jackson era, they’ve been 1-31 in two seasons in the league. Even though they have almost lost every possible game since 2016, they retained Jackson and he is a weekly unintentional comedy show with the press. They do have some interesting players including this year’s No. 1 overall pick in QB Baker Mayfield. You can’t get much worse than 0-16, but this is the Browns we’re talking about.
Highlight: So far the best non-Jackson moment is new WR Jarvis Landry ripping into his teammates for slacking off at practice. Landry is also clearly the top player on the field so he’s looking like the early player MVP of this season. But Hue Jackson is stealing the show. He fulfilled a promise he made the previous year stating he’d jump into Lake Erie if the team lost every game (which they did by the way!). Later, he openly rebuffed his coaches when they said that they think too many players are sitting out of practice. I can’t wait to see what he does next.
Final Record: What the Browns “achieved” by going 0-16 last year is statistically difficult. There’s almost no way they could repeat that, but I’m still estimating a two or three win campaign for the 2018 Browns. They will not get the benefit of the doubt from me. But I hope they provide more great entertainment on HBO.
Tom’s Thoughts of the Week
The Oscars made waves last week with three announced changes to the ceremony. First, they’re cutting an hour off the live broadcast (Good call). Second, they’re moving the date up three weeks (okay). The last and most major change is they’re adding a category called Best Achievement in Popular Film. With an annual ratings decline, this is a pretty frank acknowledgment that they want to draw in more viewers. But I think this is a misguided move by the Academy. How is popularity being defined? Box office numbers? Adam Sandler movies are still popular, are we going to giving him an Oscar? This also insinuates that the best film cannot also be the most popular film. The most obvious example at the 2009 Oscar Ceremony when they shut The Dark Knight out of Best Picture. The Best Picture winner that year was Slumdog Millionaire, defeating fellow nominees The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, Milk and The Reader. If we’re following the new rules, The Dark Knight would have been in a separate category from those movies. I challenge anyone to argue that TDK is worse than any of those five films. At best, this category will create a lot of conversation about the show. At worst, it could indirectly filter future movies from getting the industry’s most coveted prize.
While we’re on the topic of films, Movie Pass is changing their offering yet again. Now you are limited to three movies a month, but the benefit is there will not be a price increase. You hear that sound? That’s the ticking time bomb that is Movie Pass.
If you didn’t believe Tiger Woods was back after his British Open performance, there’s no denying it now. I can’t believe how excited I was to watch him play on Sunday at the PGA Championship. I am now convinced he could win another major title. I feel bad once again for Brooks Koepka for becoming an unintentional villain. Congrats to him. Tiger couldn’t have played any better and he still beat him.
Shout-out to Paul Bothe for having this thought that I’m sharing with you all. He thinks that earbuds are short for ear buddies. Why else would they shorten it to bud? I can’t find a reasonable answer to thwart this claim. I love my ear buddies.
File this one under “Things I had no idea existed”. The World Surf League’s Big Wave Awards just ruled that Brazilian surfer Rodrigo Koxa rode the biggest wave in world history. It's supposedly the Oscars of Surfing. Don’t believe it? Watch this video. Koxa glides down an 80-foot wave that’s more of a liquid mountain avalanche than a body of water. People rightfully critique the dangers of playing professional football, but watching this guy ride actually made me afraid for his life. And yet he pulls it off. This was thrilling to watch. Kudos to you Rodrigo.