It wouldn’t be August without a new season of Hard knocksHBO/Max’s long-running NFL docuseries returns for another edition, this time featuring the Chicago Bears’ 2024 training camp. The Bears haven’t had a winning season in six years, but there’s optimism on the shores of Lake Michigan with the addition of No. 1 overall pick Caleb Williams.
HARD KNOCKS: TRAINING CAMP WITH THE CHICAGO BEARSSTREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening shot: A cold open, with text indicating the date is April 25, 2024. Bears head coach Matt Eberflus calls Caleb Williams to inform him, to no one’s surprise, that the USC quarterback is being selected first overall in the NFL Draft by the Bears, who intend to make him the new face of their franchise.
The essence: Hard knocks It’s a formula we already know and it’s a winning one. It shows near-real-time footage (sometimes just a day or two old) taken from inside an NFL team’s training facility week by week. This footage is mixed with informal interviews and explanatory voiceovers from Liev Schrieber, and it’s both highly polished and feels awfully relaxed considering the pressure of an NFL season.
What shows will it remind you of? In this point, Hard knocks I shouldn’t remind you of anything else but Hard knocks; is the largest fish of its kind in the show, and has been for some time.
Our opinion: There have been seasons when Hard knocks has come without an obvious narrative: seasons in which the central story of a team’s season is still unclear. Hard knocks: Chicago Bears training camp does not suffer from such ambiguity.
There’s no bigger factor in an NFL team’s success than its starting quarterback. It’s not just that seasons can rise and fall based on a quarterback’s performance (just ask the New York Jets how quickly their expectations were reset in 2023 after newly signed Aaron Rodgers’ season-ending injury), but that a coach’s tenure — decades — can hinge on whether or not you have The Guy at the center.
For the Bears, this has long been a problem. Sure, they made it to a Super Bowl in 2007, but no one confused Rex Grossman with Tom Brady (plus, that was seventeen years ago). As one commentator points out in a montage of quotes, the Bears are the only team in the NFL that has never had a quarterback throw for 4,000 yards in a season.
They’ve bet everything on turning that season around, and that represents a big gamble. Just three years removed from spending a high first-round pick on Justin Fields, the Bears decided to hit the reset button, selecting Caleb Williams with the first overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft, despite the huge offers on the table had they been willing to trade the pick. Williams comes in with some of the highest expectations for a quarterback in years. Will he be the next Patrick Mahomes and elevate the Bears into perennial contention? Or will he be another in the long line of highly touted, highly drafted quarterbacks who fail to live up to expectations?
That will take a while to sort out. In the meantime, there are more important things to win. Just ask safety Jonathan Owens, who is packing to travel to Paris to watch his wife, American gymnastics superstar Simone Biles, compete in the Olympics.
“That’s going to be the Super Bowl!” marvels fellow host Adrian Colbert as Owens talks about his travel plans. “Wow, that’s going to be a beautiful experience.”
After spending two weeks listening to content about the Olympics, it’s fun to see Biles in a calm, no-pressure conversation, reminding Owens of the differences in liquid restrictions between the U.S. TSA and European airport security. Owens, for his part, is brimming with enthusiasm as he talks about watching Biles compete while driving to the airport.
“I’m just sitting there watching and thinking, ‘Oh my God, I’m just blown away by the beam. There’s no way they can do flips, blind landings, all that… I love supporting her at the Olympics, it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity.”
Some of the biggest dramas of a season Hard knocks Quarterbacks often aren’t at the level of gold medalists or first-overall picks, but rather those clinging to the margins, and this season devotes some time to the three quarterbacks vying to be Williams’ backup: Austin Reed, Tyson Bagent and Brett Rypien. They aren’t getting many reps, and they have to make the most of the ones they get, including the preseason-opening Hall of Fame Game.
Sex and skin: None.
Parting shot: The Bears take on the Houston Texans in the Hall of Fame preseason opener in Canton, Ohio. Both Williams and young Texans star quarterback C.J. Stroud sit out the field in this opener, and backup Brett Rypien throws three touchdowns before handing the ball to rookie Austin Reed, who performs well in front of his visiting family before severe weather ends the game early. Meanwhile, tackle Theo Benedet has suffered an injury that promises to keep him out for 4-5 weeks. However, these frustrations don’t hide the team’s obvious enthusiasm for the season.
As Owens, back home, watches Biles struggle in her balance beam final, Schrieber points out the applicability of the Olympic motto to the Bears’ hopes: Faster. Higher. Stronger.
Sleeping Star: He may not be an unexpected star when you’re talking about the greatest college football coach of all time, but it’s a nice surprise to see Nick Saban appear in the first episode. The coaching legend, fresh off a record-breaking season with the Alabama Crimson Tide, visits Bears head coach Matt Eberflus, who played linebacker for Saban in his first head coaching job at the University of Toledo. He offers Eberflus some sobering advice about the expectations Williams is going to face. “Expectations are a killer, and development is the key for him. Peyton Manning threw 28 interceptions as a rookie. But it didn’t affect him. The score doesn’t mean anything until the game is over.”
Pilot’s most typical phrase: “Caleb Williams has a chance to be Chicago’s biggest new addition since Michael Jordan,” an unseen commentator intones, the starting point for a series of effusive critiques of the rookie quarterback’s potential impact on a franchise that has suffered from mediocre-to-bad quarterback play for decades. As soon as the line ends, “Sirius” by The Alan Parsons Project, made famous by the Jordan-era Chicago Bulls’ pregame introductions, fades in to emphasize the point. But hey, no pressure, kid.
Our calling: STREAM IT. Even if you’re not a Chicago Bears fan, there’s no better way to prepare for the upcoming NFL season than with Hard knocks.
Scott Hines, editor of the much-loved Action Cookbook Newsletter,is an architect, blogger, and Internet user based in Louisville, Kentucky.
