When the NFL announced at its Annual Meeting on Monday that both the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots had committed to Hard Knocks — the Seahawks for this summer, the Patriots for 2027 — the immediate question was how the league managed to land two of the NFL’s most prominent franchises for a show that teams have spent years actively dodging.
According to Adam Schefter, the answer is that the NFL finally started taking teams at their word.
“Let me tell you why there was a double announcement, which we’ve never seen before,” Schefter laid out on his eponymous podcast. “Because the NFL has struggled in recent years to get teams to do Hard Knocks. And when the NFL has asked teams to do Hard Knocks during the summer, the answer that they’re commonly told is, ‘We’ll do it next year.'”
How the NFL was able to procure Hard Knocks commitments from the Seahawks for this summer and the Patriots for next summer.
Cc: @DanStanczyk
🎧 https://t.co/SfbQGW2Y7A pic.twitter.com/oAolNFJM7M
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) April 2, 2026
“So what the NFL did this year is when the New England Patriots said, ‘We’ll do it next year,’ they said, ‘You’re in! You’ve got 2027. Congratulations! Next year.’ And so, they’ve taken two Super Bowl participants — the Seahawks this summer in ’26, the Patriots next summer in ’27 — and they held their feet to the fire,” ESPN’s lead NFL insider continued. “And they said, ‘Next year? Next year it is.’ Next year, they will be on Hard Knocks.”
The criteria governing who could be compelled to participate in Hard Knocks was long structured around a playoff exemption that allowed recent postseason teams to opt out, and the Patriots used that exemption to stay off the show throughout the Belichick dynasty. Even after the league liberalized those rules last year — removing the playoff exemption and dramatically expanding the pool of eligible teams — New England kept pushing it off with the “next year” response.
That was until the NFL called the Patriots’ bluff, and the two Super Bowl LX participants ended up locked in back-to-back as a result.
Following a 2025 Bills season that ended with a finale under 37 minutes and was widely criticized as hollow, carefully managed PR content indistinguishable from what teams produce for their own YouTube channels, Schefter clearly views the Seahawks and Patriots as a needed course correction for the franchise.
Hard Knocks has always been at its best when the subjects forgot — or didn’t care — that the cameras were there. How could we ever forget Rex Ryan cursing out his team and demanding a snack? But last summer’s version was a great reminder that good access is never guaranteed just because the cameras are on.