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Two days earlier, they
filmed as head coach Jon
Gruden addressed his
players: “You’ve got to end
somebody’s dream. You
gotta take their job. You
gotta take their heart. You
guys clear about this NFL ...
now?”
From Raiders training
camp, where 32 “Hard
Knocks” crew members are
embedded with 20 cameras
(six manned, 14 robotically
controlled), an average of 50
hours’ worth of footage per
day — up to 65 on heavy
practice days — will be
transmitted nearly 3,000
miles to NFL Films head-
quarters in Mount Laurel,
N.J. There, a team of 25 edi-
tors combs through it —
roughly 350 hours in all — to
construct a single episode of
HBO’s docuseries, which be-
gins its 14th season Tuesday.
Each edition of “Hard
Knocks” follows one NFL
team over five episodes as
they train for the upcoming
season and whittle their ros-
ter from 90 potential players
down to 53. The New York
Jets’ turn in 2010 — with riot-
ous coach Rex Ryan — and
last year’s stay with the
Cleveland Browns — after a
winless season — have been
fan favorites. But the deci-
sion to feature the Raiders,
the closest thing the NFL
has to an institutional anti-
hero, has made this season
perhaps the most antici-
pated yet. Gruden’s frank
and colorful personality
should be familiar to viewers
from his nine years as an an-
alyst on “Monday Night
Football” and his previous
stints as a head coach, in-
cluding his first run with the
Raiders from 1998 until early
- Still, there are other
draws for this particular sea-
son.
Half of the Raiders’ cur-
rent roster is players new to
the team, among them the
misfit toys the organization
is known for, including noto-
riously brutal linebacker
Vontaze Burfict and pos-
sibly incompetent backup
quarterback Nathan
Peterman. Ronald Ollie, a
defensive lineman who was
previously featured on Net-
flix’s “Last Chance U,” has
already been cut. Late last
week, the Raiders picked up
Jordan Lasley, a wide re-
ceiver who’d been dropped
by the Baltimore Ravens the
day after fighting with team-
mates and throwing a foot-
ball into a pond during a
touchdown celebration.
“There’s dramatic ten-
sion at this training camp,
because they’re still in the
middle of something,” said
Ken Rodgers, who’s been the
senior coordinating pro-
ducer of “Hard Knocks”
since 2007. “This isn’t about
repeating last year’s suc-
cess. If you were a team that
did well last year, if you’re the
Los Angeles Rams, a lot of
your camp is fine-tuning.
It’s, ‘Let’s not get any major
injuries.’ There’s not as
much competition at other
camps. There’s a lot of com-
petition at Raiders camp.
There’s a lot at stake, and
that creates interesting tele-
vision for the fans of any
team.”
To add to the intrigue,
this is the Raiders’ last sea-
son before relocating to Las
Vegas, ending their tumul-
tuous will-they/won’t-they
relationships with Oakland
and Los Angeles. But don’t
expect these off-field devel-
opments to play a central
part in the season. “This is
essentially a story about the
football players, and we stay
very present-tense,” said
Rodgers. “If we spend time
on the history of the Raiders,
it will be a minute long, not- If we spend time on the
future of the Raiders and
Las Vegas, it’ll be a minute,
not 20.” According to Rod-
gers, production usually
waits until coaching staff re-
alignments, free-agent re-
shuffling and the NFL draft
are over before settling on
which team they want to fea-
ture on “Hard Knocks,” but
this year fans were clam-
oring for “Hard Knocks” to
cover the Raiders even be-
fore those annual check-
points. The Raiders weren’t
as enthusiastic about the
idea.
At the start of training
camp, first-time general
manager Mike Mayock told
the press, “Bottom line for
me: Jon [Gruden] and I are
kind of old school. And the
reason you go away to train-
ing camp is to get away from
all the distractions, get to-
gether, bond, learn your as-
signments. No distractions,
no intrusions. ‘Hard Knocks’
is an intrusion. But it was
handed to us, so it’s up to us
to deal with it, and I think
we’re dealing with it in a pro-
fessional way.”
NFL Films and HBO
won’t disclose how teams
are chosen for “Hard
Knocks,” but they downplay
any issues between them
and the Raiders. Several
days after Mayock’s com-
ments, the show’s director,
Tim Rumpf, said, “Obvi-
ously the Raiders have their
concerns and every team
has their concerns when we
begin the process, and a lot
of that I think comes from
not knowing what it really
means to be on ‘Hard
Knocks.’ They think we’re
going to be all over the place
filming 24/7, and that’s just
not the case. This is our 14th
season, it’s targeted shoot-
ing. We know what we need
to get to make the show
great and it’s mostly about
communication with them,letting them know what
we’re doing on a daily basis,
letting them know what
we’re hoping to capture. The
comfort level will come in
time.”
Rodgers noted that NFL
Films works with all the
teams in the league, editing
their highlight films and
often wiring their players
with microphones during
games. Gruden himself wore
a mic when he coached the
Tampa Bay Buccaneers to a
Super Bowl victory in 2003.
Rodgers believes any resist-
ance a coach might have to
“Hard Knocks” being at
camp is attributable to their
generally controlling de-
meanor. “[C]oaches don’t
really love playing road
games. They don’t love going
to London to play a game.
They don’t love playing on
‘Thursday Night Football.’
They don’t love restrictions
on practices. There’s a lot of
things coaches don’t like.
That’s sort of the nature of
being a coach. It’s wanting to
do it your way.”
The Raiders didn’t re-
spond to requests to partici-
pate in this story, but JW
Johnson, the Cleveland
Browns’ executive vice pres-
ident, wrote in an email
about his team’s experience
last year, “It was a good
show; we would do it again —
probably not in the immedi-
ate future, but we would also
recommend it to other
teams. With the Raiders do-
ing it this year, we would
definitely be advocates of
‘Hard Knocks’ for what itcan do for your fan base and
for the team nationally.”
The idea for “Hard
Knocks” came to HBO from
Marty Callner, who directed
the network’s first stand-up
comedy special with Robert
Klein in 1975 and a number of
hair-metal music videos in
the late 1980s. The first sea-
son, featuring the Ravens,
aired in 2001 and included
Liev Schreiber’s now-trade-
mark narration. After the
2002 season, the show went
off the air for four years.
“When the show came
back [in 2007], there were a
lot of veterans who had no
interest in appearing on an
HBO show about training
camp,” Rodgers said, ex-
plaining what he calls a “sea
change” in players’ attitudes
toward “Hard Knocks.” “But
the new draft picks that are
coming into the Raiders at
22 years old were 10 years old
when that show came
[back] on the air. They were
13 years old when they saw
Rex Ryan and the Jets ap-
pear on the show. They grew
up watching the show. This
has been part of the football
world long enough now ...
that it’s not a big deal to
them.”
Each season of “Hard
Knocks” devotes special at-
tention to the “bubble play-
ers” — those uncertain to
make the final roster for the
start of the regular season.
One standout from the
Browns’ year was Devon Ca-
juste, a tight end who prac-
tices healing with crystals
and whose father told himon camera that he’d recently
suffered a third heart attack.
He became a fan favorite but
did not make the team. “I
definitely thought [‘Hard
Knocks’] nailed my quirki-
ness,” Cajuste said from Los
Angeles, where he’s now a
personal trainer at Equinox
and an aspiring motiva-
tional speaker. “I know I’m
peculiar, but they made it a
little extra. But it was funny.”
Cajuste said he didn’t
watch most of the season’s
episodes until months after
they aired, but he did re-
spond to thousands of mes-
sages to his Instagram ac-
count from people who were
interested in his energy work
or inspired by his relation-
ship with his dad.
He said he barely noticed
he was constantly being
documented, since he was so
intent on landing a spot on
the team. Even during the
show’s growing interest in
him, the cameras mostly fol-
lowed him when he wasn’t
practicing or playing pre-
season games. “All that per-
sonal film work, it really only
took up three hours total. It
wasn’t really distracting, be-
cause you just do you,” he
said. “What you’re focused
on when you’re mic-ed up is
letting your teammates
know, “Hey, I’m mic-ed right
now. Don’t say some dumb ...
for TV.”
HBO and NFL Films po-
sition “Hard Knocks” as an
optimistic human-interest
show, one about young men
persevering to earn a job
that rewards their dedica-
tion. While pro football re-
mains by far the most popu-
lar sport in the United
States, it’s also become an
arena for hot-button issues,
including athlete protests
over police brutality and the
game’s debilitating long-
term effects on some play-
ers, including the neurode-
generative disease CTE.
HBO’s newsmagazine
“Real Sports” has been
unafraid to confront these
issues, but so far “Hard
Knocks” hasn’t engaged.
Asked if it ever would, Peter
Nelson, executive vice presi-
dent of HBO Sports, replied,
“I don’t think NFL Films are
afraid to go in any direction
that best serves the viewers
and the stories contained
within the program.”
Theoretically, that may
be true. But unless the
Raiders’ season goes in a
surprising direction, expect
the series to continue ignor-
ing football’s hardest knocks
yet.‘Hard Knocks:
Training Camp
With the
Oakland
Raiders’Where:HBO
When:10 p.m. Tuesday
Rating:TV-MA (may be
unsuitable for children
under the age of 17)NEW YORK JETScoach Rex Ryan became a fan favorite for his candid quips when his team got the “Hard Knocks” treatment in 2010.HBORAIDERS COACHJon Gruden is another colorful character, so expectations are high for series’ 14th season.Oakland RaidersTeam
set for
‘Hard’
review
[‘Knocks,’ from E1]