Bears are facing a 'Hard Knocks' life
The transitional moment came when legendary college football Zeus Nick Saban said to Matt Eberflus: “You can’t be a transactional leader.” Followed shortly in the same thought by, “Being a transformative leader is trying to serve other people, trying to help them for their benefit. And you have a vision for what you want to accomplish and what your vision of the offense to be. And you are going to try to inspire the people to help you do that” Pause. Ending with, “You gotta be somebody that somebody can emulate.”
This column is not about the show, it’s about the power “Hard Knocks” has and carries with it when it enters into your football team’s world and puts the cameras on everything you do.
It’s either going to end up being a gift or a curse.
One episode in, it’s a little too early to tell which direction the next four episodes are going to take us, but if history has any pull on the impact it might have on this upcoming season, well, HBO Presents “Hard Knocks: Training Camp with the Chicago Bears,” could be the “docuseries” that ends the Bears before they even begin.
The show’s history is more of a telltale sign than an analytical breakdown or FiveThirtyEight prediction. It makes sense the Bears fought being the focus of the show as long as they could. At some point, though, the progress of elimination is going to catch up with all NFL teams when it comes to the series. Especially when there are teams who’ve been featured three times and you’re a team yet to be showcased. Making the Bears, thanks to all of Ryan Poles’ offseason moves and acquisitions, inevitable to ghost the “Hard Knocks” radar as their next possible victims.
In 18 seasons of "Hard Knocks," only three featured teams have won a Super Bowl at any point after being the focus of the show.
Last year the show jinxed the Jets. The year before that it tried to jinx the Lions, who opened the 2022 season 1-6 after a 1-3 preseason, only to finally turn it around and finishing 9-8, still missing the playoffs but winning triple the number of games that the Bears did. It’d be easy to say it jinxed the Cowboys in 2021 (and in 2002 and 2008 when they were featured), but then again, this is the Cowboys we’re talking about. Hard to put blame on HBO for any of Dallas’ and coach Mike McCarthy’s recent postseason history.
In 2017, the Tampa Bay Bucs went from a 9-7 record to back-to-back 5-11/last in the NFC South seasons after being a “Hard Knocks” subject. Similar scenario with the 2016 Los Angeles Rams (going from 7-9 to 4-12), and then there’s the 2001 injury to Jamal Lewis during training camp of the inaugural season of “Hard Knocks” that many believed stopped Baltimore from repeating as Super Bowl champions. And have not returned since.
In general, “Hard Knocks” teams do not have strong track records of recovery from being the subject matters. Going into the 2024 season only seven of the 19 “Hard Knocks: Training Camp” teams made the playoffs the same season they were featured and of those seven only one reached the conference title game: the 2010 New York Jets. That also marked the last time the Jets made the postseason. Coincidences don’t lie.
The show has accumulated 18 Sports Emmys. It is, even considering ESPN’s "30 For 30," television’s most acclaimed sports documentary franchise. And for the first time, with "Hard Knocks: In Season with the AFC North,” it will chronicle an entire division during the final six weeks of the season. For the Baltimore Ravens, Cincinnati Bengals, Cleveland Browns and Pittsburgh Steelers, please pay close attention to the Bears during the regular season, see how they pan out after their “Hard Knocks” experience. Consider yourselves warned.
A documentary or reality show or both? The Marty Callner-created and Liev Schreiber-narrated football “universe” has served multiple purposes and been called many things, and still no one can pinpoint exactly what it is. What is known by most is that reality shows, if anything, do two things and two things well: They expose almost everything cast members don’t want exposed and once they force you to see yourself as you really are, it often destroys you.
Unless you are related to, married to, or slept with a Kardashian.
As a Bears fan, your only hope is that the dysfunction (if there is any carryover from the pre-Caleb Williams years) doesn’t come through. As an HBO and NFL Films franchise, your main hope is that it does.
Being forced to face your own demons, along with potential promise and unrealistic expectations, usually are the components “Hard Knocks” puts in play that become a team’s demise. But one moment in Episode 1 could have the power to override all of that for the Bears. It was when safety valve/running back D’Andre Swift, immediately after the Yoda Saban edit, tells Williams, “It’s your team, bro. You’ve got the keys to it. Voice it, bro. If something’s wrong, you’ve got the keys to this, bro. Use it. Drive.”
Transformative over transactional. Either gift or curse.