For the past 21 years, HBO Sports and NFL Films have teamed up to chronicle training camps for various league teams in popular “Hard Knocks” docuseries, starting with the Baltimore Ravens over the summer. 2001. On Thursday, the NFL announced that for the first time in franchise history, Hard Knocks will follow a team in season. The subject will be the Indianapolis Colts, or in terms of Philadelphia sports fans, the team that traded with the Eagles for Carson Wentz.
“Hard Knocks” isn’t the first docuserie to follow a team in season. In fact, Amazon’s “All or Nothing” followed the Eagles through the 2019 season, although the team very clearly had a veto over what was and was not being shown. These will be the first NFL docuseries to air episodes this season and should be more revealing than “All or Nothing.”
Many Eagles fans will be watching Wentz closely this season, (a) because the compensation for the Eagles draft pick is directly tied to Wentz and Colts’ performances in 2021, and (b) because it’s sport, and it’s fun to follow great athletes with their new teams after they leave Philadelphia.
From a football standpoint, it doesn’t seem like a good idea for the Colts to invite that kind of distraction into their building. Also, it’s worth noting that the Eagles have a Colts second-round pick that can become a first-round pick if Wentz plays 75% of the snaps, or if he plays 70% of the snaps and the Colts make the playoffs. . There is a general belief that if the Colts’ season goes horribly wrong, they’ll just put Wentz on the bench so he can’t hit those playing time benchmarks. Would it be harder for the Colts to put Wentz on the bench? bench for preservation purposes of draft picks if they are under the microscope of a popular docuserie that will be closely watched by the entire NFL?
The Colts have already had a turbulent offseason after suffering an assortment of injuries and being one of the worst performing teams in the NFL in terms of vaccination rates. Their start to the 2021 regular season also didn’t go as planned, as they lost their home opener handily to the Seattle Seahawks.
“Hard Knocks In Season: The Indianapolis Colts” will debut Nov. 17 (10 p.m. ET) on HBO.
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