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They won't be able to force us to be after we make the playoffs this year.
EDIT: Sorry, I posted before I read @Mackeyser 's post.
Last edited:
Houston Texans to be on Hard Knocks
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EDIT: Sorry, I posted before I read @Mackeyser 's post.
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Sources: Texans set to star on HBO's 'Hard Knocks'
By Tania Ganguli
ESPN.com
http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/12961200/houston-texans-star-hbo-hard-knocks
HOUSTON -- The Texans will be the next subject of HBO's documentary series "Hard Knocks," according to multiple sources.
The team is expected to make an announcement soon. This marks the first time the Texans are the subject of the show, which dates back to 2001.
Houston and its star J.J. Watt made a cameo on the show last season when the Atlanta Falcons were the headliners. The Texans hosted the Falcons for joint practices during training camp.
The show has featured the Ravens, Chiefs, Jets, Dolphins and Falcons one time each. The Cowboys and the Bengals have each been featured twice.
Teams have the right to refuse the show if they have a new head coach, have been to the playoffs in the past two seasons or if they have been the subject of the show in the past 10 years. The Texans fit none of those criteria.
By Tania Ganguli
ESPN.com
http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/12961200/houston-texans-star-hbo-hard-knocks
HOUSTON -- The Texans will be the next subject of HBO's documentary series "Hard Knocks," according to multiple sources.
The team is expected to make an announcement soon. This marks the first time the Texans are the subject of the show, which dates back to 2001.
Houston and its star J.J. Watt made a cameo on the show last season when the Atlanta Falcons were the headliners. The Texans hosted the Falcons for joint practices during training camp.
The show has featured the Ravens, Chiefs, Jets, Dolphins and Falcons one time each. The Cowboys and the Bengals have each been featured twice.
Teams have the right to refuse the show if they have a new head coach, have been to the playoffs in the past two seasons or if they have been the subject of the show in the past 10 years. The Texans fit none of those criteria.
A55VA6
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ChrisW
Stating the obvious
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Aren't the Browns front runners for hard knocks every season?
Mackeyser
Supernovas are where gold forms; the only place.
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As much as the Rams FO might not want this for any number of reasons, it feels to me as a fan of the Rams like the choice could come down to St. Louis and Montpelier.
"But..." you say, "Montpelier doesn't have an NFL team. That would mean St. Louis would get it automatically."
Yeah...not so fast.
We've had away playoff games with better records, been cheated out of Super Bowls... so, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if somehow some crazy math turned up and rather than watch how Fisher prepared a team for a season in the NFL, the NFL would be preparing fans for its version of Portlandia...in Vermont, narrated by Liev Schriber and everything.
Maybe that's taking things a bit far, but our team has a tremendous history and the 3rd most drafted HoFers of any team in the NFL. We've been to 3 SBs and won 1. I can understand with the mostly losing since the end of the 80s except the GSOT times that folks wouldn't be wanting to talk about the Rams first. I get that. But, not even last?
There's a reason Rams fans have a Rodney Dangerfield complex...
As it is, I'm still shocked they give any unit on our team any credit for anything at all and to this day, the Rams don't WIN anything according to the media, but rather the other team "lost" or "let the game get away" or another euphemism for "all things being equal, the Rams should lose every game". I mean, how many times have you stayed up for a highlight show that's supposed to show extensive highlights of every game only for them to "run late" and barely mention the Rams game (usually because we won) with no highlights at all or maybe show one highlight. I remember one such occurrence where they showed one highlight and it was of the losing team scoring a TD.
I don't really care about stuff like Hard Knocks per se.
At some point, I'd like our Rams to be respected around the league. They aren't a 1-15 team anymore. They may not be a 15-1 team (yet), but it seems like it's gonna take a few 15-1 seasons to change people's perceptions.
If that's what it's gonna take, I hope the Rams oblige them.
"But..." you say, "Montpelier doesn't have an NFL team. That would mean St. Louis would get it automatically."
Yeah...not so fast.
We've had away playoff games with better records, been cheated out of Super Bowls... so, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if somehow some crazy math turned up and rather than watch how Fisher prepared a team for a season in the NFL, the NFL would be preparing fans for its version of Portlandia...in Vermont, narrated by Liev Schriber and everything.
Maybe that's taking things a bit far, but our team has a tremendous history and the 3rd most drafted HoFers of any team in the NFL. We've been to 3 SBs and won 1. I can understand with the mostly losing since the end of the 80s except the GSOT times that folks wouldn't be wanting to talk about the Rams first. I get that. But, not even last?
There's a reason Rams fans have a Rodney Dangerfield complex...
As it is, I'm still shocked they give any unit on our team any credit for anything at all and to this day, the Rams don't WIN anything according to the media, but rather the other team "lost" or "let the game get away" or another euphemism for "all things being equal, the Rams should lose every game". I mean, how many times have you stayed up for a highlight show that's supposed to show extensive highlights of every game only for them to "run late" and barely mention the Rams game (usually because we won) with no highlights at all or maybe show one highlight. I remember one such occurrence where they showed one highlight and it was of the losing team scoring a TD.
I don't really care about stuff like Hard Knocks per se.
At some point, I'd like our Rams to be respected around the league. They aren't a 1-15 team anymore. They may not be a 15-1 team (yet), but it seems like it's gonna take a few 15-1 seasons to change people's perceptions.
If that's what it's gonna take, I hope the Rams oblige them.
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http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.co...bug-eating-teammate-will-be-hard-knocks-star/
J.J. Watt thinks bug-eating teammate will be “Hard Knocks” star
Posted by Darin Gantt on May 28, 2015
Getty Images
With HBO’S “Hard Knocks” choosing to document the Texans this year, it’s clear that defensive end J.J. Watt is going to get a lot of attention.
But Watt’s hoping for some more notoriety for center Ben Jones, who could also steal the show.
According to John McClain of the Houston Chronicle, Jones “will eat or drink just about anything on a dare,” which makes him incredibly popular with teammates.
“I think Ben’s going to be a big winner,” Watt said. “I think there’ll be plenty of storylines following him because of his escapades – some of the things he eats, some of the things he does. Just Ben Jones being Ben Jones, so I think that’ll be great.”
Young players who exist on the fringes will often do what their elders ask, and all the spare time and spare money some of these guys have lead to some pretty unusual chances to supplement their income.
(Which reminds me of former Panthers backup offensive lineman Louis Williams, who was able to buy a motorcycle with the money he made eating mayonnaise and bugs and a lot of other stuff on dares from Todd Steussie and Kevin Donnalley.)
That kind of color is what HBO and NFL Films are looking for, which could make the Texans surprisingly entertaining.
“You’re a little different between the lines than you are off the field,” Watt said. “That’s what makes great players great.
“I think you’ll see a little bit different side. You may have to choose your vocabulary a little more wisely, though.”
And your diet, apparently.
J.J. Watt thinks bug-eating teammate will be “Hard Knocks” star
Posted by Darin Gantt on May 28, 2015
With HBO’S “Hard Knocks” choosing to document the Texans this year, it’s clear that defensive end J.J. Watt is going to get a lot of attention.
But Watt’s hoping for some more notoriety for center Ben Jones, who could also steal the show.
According to John McClain of the Houston Chronicle, Jones “will eat or drink just about anything on a dare,” which makes him incredibly popular with teammates.
“I think Ben’s going to be a big winner,” Watt said. “I think there’ll be plenty of storylines following him because of his escapades – some of the things he eats, some of the things he does. Just Ben Jones being Ben Jones, so I think that’ll be great.”
Young players who exist on the fringes will often do what their elders ask, and all the spare time and spare money some of these guys have lead to some pretty unusual chances to supplement their income.
(Which reminds me of former Panthers backup offensive lineman Louis Williams, who was able to buy a motorcycle with the money he made eating mayonnaise and bugs and a lot of other stuff on dares from Todd Steussie and Kevin Donnalley.)
That kind of color is what HBO and NFL Films are looking for, which could make the Texans surprisingly entertaining.
“You’re a little different between the lines than you are off the field,” Watt said. “That’s what makes great players great.
“I think you’ll see a little bit different side. You may have to choose your vocabulary a little more wisely, though.”
And your diet, apparently.
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- Peter
http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.co...-is-coming-but-does-it-really-benefit-a-team/
Hard Knocks is coming, but does it really benefit a team?
Posted by Mike Florio on August 4, 2015
Getty Images
Many (including me) think the Jets broke the Hard Knocks mold in 2010, and that every year since then the show has been trying to live up to something that won’t be recaptured until another Rex Ryan-coached team enters the spotlight again.
Before the Texans were selected as this year’s Hard Knocks guinea pig, Ryan danced around the possibility for doing in his first year with the Bills what he did in his second year with the Jets. Maybe he was being uncharacteristically coy. Or maybe he now realizes that his team didn’t really benefit from the assignment.
As the Texans prepare for the first episode of their turn under the Hard Knocks microscope, that’s the biggest question: Does it really help?
The Dolphins thought it would help. And it didn’t.
“When I see Bill Belichick allowing the Hard Knocks cameras into his organization, then I’ll believe the experience might be a good thing for the team,” Armando Salguero of theMiami Herald tells Richard Deitsch of SI.com. “I do not think it serves the teams and I do not think it helped the Dolphins.
Indeed, it made multiple players upset with coaches when they heard how some coaches spoke about them in private. It created some embarrassment for the players and fostered some distrust of the coaches. This from what players told me.”
It also didn’t help the Dolphins from a strategic standpoint, given that one opponent said he picked up the Miami snap count from watching the show. That opponent’s name is J.J. Watt, whose Texans will risk having their snap count picked up by opponents who watch this year’s show.
The late Steve Sabol, who like his father, Ed, should be in the Hall of Fame, routinely defended the Hard Knocks approach by pointing out that former Packers coach Vince Lombardi loved it when cameras were at practice, because it made his guys go at it harder. Steve Sabol said on many occasions that Lombardi would direct the NFL Films crews to pretend they were shooting practice even when the cameras didn’t have film in them.
But it’s one thing for a snippet or a sound bite to be edited into a broader package that would show up weeks if not months after the fact through a rabbit-eared TV set that had no way to record the information. Today, every frame can be captured and dissected.
From the perspective of fans, the scenes that get dissected the most involve the termination of a player’s employment. During the otherwise forgettable 2012 version of the show, the only memorable moments involved coach Joe Philbin cutting receiver Chad Ochocinco and G.M. Jeff Ireland telling cornerback Vontae Davis he’d been traded to the Colts.
The following May, Commissioner Roger Goodell said the league wants to make the process of cutting players more “humane.” The best place to start would be to not put those moments on HBO every year.
That’s why some teams will never do it, at least not willingly. Cardinals coach Bruce Arians said in 2013 that he’d fight a Hard Knocks assignment “tooth and nail.”
“I think it’s a total distraction, and I think it’s an embarrassment to players,” Arians said at the time. “I think when players are released, some of the things that are said between coaches and players are too personal, and nobody else’s business.”
There’s another potential drawback that I hadn’t previously considered. The special access given to Hard Knocks potentially undermines the important relationship between the team and the non-league-or-team-owned media that covers it.
“I’ve watched every Hard Knocks for the exact reason I didn’t want the series showing the team I cover: They get access I don’t, so they get storylines I don’t get,” John McClain of the Houston Chronicle tells Deitsch. “They get information I don’t have a chance to get before they do. As a reporter, I don’t like it when anybody gets something I don’t have, but Hard Knocks gets access that isn’t fair to media who cover a team. . . .
The Hard Knocks impact is behind the scenes, when the cameras shoot injuries and players being released. That’s where Hard Knocks will impact my job, and I won’t know it until I watch the series, which I would never miss, anyway. Watching in the past, I’ve always felt bad for the media who regularly cover the team.”
I’ve always felt bad for the players who have no say at all in the assignment, but who are the ones most directly affected by it. They’re trying to work, to compete, to earn a job or to keep a job. And they all have to deal with the presence of cameras and microphones that capture everything they do and say — and that capture everything said about them or done to them.
And even though the team has final say over what gets aired, there’s always a chance the team will make things even worse for a player by not removing an embarrassing exchange — like when former (and now current again) Jets cornerback Antonio Cromartie had trouble rattling off the names of his children.
So, no, it’s not a benefit for teams. But with the NFL making a long-term commitment to the project, it doesn’t matter whether the teams like it. If the arrangement lasts long enough, they’ll all eventually have to do it.
Hard Knocks is coming, but does it really benefit a team?
Posted by Mike Florio on August 4, 2015
Many (including me) think the Jets broke the Hard Knocks mold in 2010, and that every year since then the show has been trying to live up to something that won’t be recaptured until another Rex Ryan-coached team enters the spotlight again.
Before the Texans were selected as this year’s Hard Knocks guinea pig, Ryan danced around the possibility for doing in his first year with the Bills what he did in his second year with the Jets. Maybe he was being uncharacteristically coy. Or maybe he now realizes that his team didn’t really benefit from the assignment.
As the Texans prepare for the first episode of their turn under the Hard Knocks microscope, that’s the biggest question: Does it really help?
The Dolphins thought it would help. And it didn’t.
“When I see Bill Belichick allowing the Hard Knocks cameras into his organization, then I’ll believe the experience might be a good thing for the team,” Armando Salguero of theMiami Herald tells Richard Deitsch of SI.com. “I do not think it serves the teams and I do not think it helped the Dolphins.
Indeed, it made multiple players upset with coaches when they heard how some coaches spoke about them in private. It created some embarrassment for the players and fostered some distrust of the coaches. This from what players told me.”
It also didn’t help the Dolphins from a strategic standpoint, given that one opponent said he picked up the Miami snap count from watching the show. That opponent’s name is J.J. Watt, whose Texans will risk having their snap count picked up by opponents who watch this year’s show.
The late Steve Sabol, who like his father, Ed, should be in the Hall of Fame, routinely defended the Hard Knocks approach by pointing out that former Packers coach Vince Lombardi loved it when cameras were at practice, because it made his guys go at it harder. Steve Sabol said on many occasions that Lombardi would direct the NFL Films crews to pretend they were shooting practice even when the cameras didn’t have film in them.
But it’s one thing for a snippet or a sound bite to be edited into a broader package that would show up weeks if not months after the fact through a rabbit-eared TV set that had no way to record the information. Today, every frame can be captured and dissected.
From the perspective of fans, the scenes that get dissected the most involve the termination of a player’s employment. During the otherwise forgettable 2012 version of the show, the only memorable moments involved coach Joe Philbin cutting receiver Chad Ochocinco and G.M. Jeff Ireland telling cornerback Vontae Davis he’d been traded to the Colts.
The following May, Commissioner Roger Goodell said the league wants to make the process of cutting players more “humane.” The best place to start would be to not put those moments on HBO every year.
That’s why some teams will never do it, at least not willingly. Cardinals coach Bruce Arians said in 2013 that he’d fight a Hard Knocks assignment “tooth and nail.”
“I think it’s a total distraction, and I think it’s an embarrassment to players,” Arians said at the time. “I think when players are released, some of the things that are said between coaches and players are too personal, and nobody else’s business.”
There’s another potential drawback that I hadn’t previously considered. The special access given to Hard Knocks potentially undermines the important relationship between the team and the non-league-or-team-owned media that covers it.
“I’ve watched every Hard Knocks for the exact reason I didn’t want the series showing the team I cover: They get access I don’t, so they get storylines I don’t get,” John McClain of the Houston Chronicle tells Deitsch. “They get information I don’t have a chance to get before they do. As a reporter, I don’t like it when anybody gets something I don’t have, but Hard Knocks gets access that isn’t fair to media who cover a team. . . .
The Hard Knocks impact is behind the scenes, when the cameras shoot injuries and players being released. That’s where Hard Knocks will impact my job, and I won’t know it until I watch the series, which I would never miss, anyway. Watching in the past, I’ve always felt bad for the media who regularly cover the team.”
I’ve always felt bad for the players who have no say at all in the assignment, but who are the ones most directly affected by it. They’re trying to work, to compete, to earn a job or to keep a job. And they all have to deal with the presence of cameras and microphones that capture everything they do and say — and that capture everything said about them or done to them.
And even though the team has final say over what gets aired, there’s always a chance the team will make things even worse for a player by not removing an embarrassing exchange — like when former (and now current again) Jets cornerback Antonio Cromartie had trouble rattling off the names of his children.
So, no, it’s not a benefit for teams. But with the NFL making a long-term commitment to the project, it doesn’t matter whether the teams like it. If the arrangement lasts long enough, they’ll all eventually have to do it.
woofwoofmo
65 Toss Power Trap
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Hard Knock - Houston Texans premiers Thursday, Aug 11th, at 9pm CDT on HBO.