HBO Sports and NFL Films will premiere the first episode of the in-season edition of Hard Knocks with the Miami Dolphins on Tuesday night at 9 PM ET on HBO and will be available to stream on Max. New episodes of the acclaimed, 18-time Emmy award-winning series will debut on Tuesday through January 9th and then on each Tuesday during the team’s potential postseason run.
Ahead of the team’s Black Friday matchup against the New York Jets, 560 WQAM morning host Joe Rose asked NFL Films producer and director Steve Trout about the process the league went through in securing the Dolphins for the series.
“The league is constantly trying to figure out what teams are good fits for different projects and different shows,” Trout said. “I’m not exactly sure how that all went down, but once it was decided, the Dolphins have been open-arms [in] welcoming us…. You get organizations that [are] transparent and they’re okay with showing what’s happening because I think it’s very clear they believe in what’s happening.”
The New York Jets appeared on the training camp edition of the show, which drew considerable interest and intrigue pertaining to the mystique surrounding new quarterback Aaron Rodgers. Throughout the program, Jets fans became accustomed to Rodgers and the impact he was having on the team, along with meetings between players and coaches and how they go about player development.
The team lost Rodgers to an Achilles injury on its first offensive drive of the season, but the four-time NFL Most Valuable Player is trying to expedite his return to the field, perhaps during this season. Whereas the Jets’ edition of Hard Knocks took place in training camp and the preseason, the Dolphins are in the midst of contending for the Super Bowl and taking part in a similar, but modified production.
“The August Hard Knocks is really six to eight times bigger than what we have here,” Trout said. “We’ve got to keep it small because we’re here for so much longer. I think what we’ve mastered over our 20 years of this is blending into the background and being the fly on the wall, and the model for this in-season has to be that way because you’re coming in – the plane’s already in flight – and so you’ve really got to make yourself small, yet still capture all that genuine gold if you will.”
Rose remarked that the Dolphins team has felt like a fun group to follow throughout the season, a sentiment Trout backed by avouching that he cannot discern any change in demeanor or actions just because of the presence of cameras. For HBO Sports and NFL Films, that is a fundamental aspect of the production every time the company brings cameras around an organization, and the Dolphins have been, to Trout, among the most genuine to appear on the program.
“Maybe people watch on a Sunday for three hours and they’re under a helmet and they’re football players,” Trout said. “Our goal is to make them dads and husbands and sons and friends, and so I think you’re going to see that tonight.”
When the Jets were on the program before the season, there were reports that the team was limiting access to meetings where players were cut from the group ahead of the season. Because of this, Hard Knocks displayed these difficult moments utilizing different forms of storytelling and shot selections based on their inventory. The Dolphins do not seem to be limiting access to their team, nor is the team selectively removing parts of episodes beforehand unless they contain proprietary information that could influence competitive balance, such as play calls.
“I think the reason, Joe, that NFL Films is able to do it is because of the trust; because teams trust us more than the FOXs or the ESPNs or the CBSs of the world,” Rose said. “They’re not watching the show to pick out scenes…. We’re just trying to tell a story, and they allow us to do that and tell the story because of that trust, and I think that’s been built up over the years.”
