NFL training camps are starting to open up, the first real sign that football season is right around the corner. But one part of the NFL experience seems to be facing a bit of uncertainty this year.
The in-season version of the popular NFL Films production Hard Knocks has yet to be announced, and its future as part of the franchise seems unclear, as noted by Mike Florio in Pro Football Talk. Last year, the NFL announced which division would feature in the second-ever in-season Hard Knocks series, the NFC East, in May. We’re now two months past that timeline, and the NFL has yet to reveal anything about which teams may participate in the show, or if the in-season series will even continue at all.
The NFL has, however, announced which teams it will follow for training camp both this season and next: the defending Super Bowl champion Seahawks will participate this year, with the Patriots already slated for next season. It’s curious, then, that the league hasn’t addressed the future of the in-season version.
Florio says Pro Football Talk made “multiple attempts over the past week” to get answers from the NFL regarding which teams would participate in this year’s in-season show, or if the show will continue at all, and received no response.
In-season Hard Knocks debuted in the 2024-25 season, with NFL Films following the four AFC North teams during the crucial stretch run of the regular season. Fans were generally receptive to the show at first, though coaches and teams had some valid concerns about being at a competitive disadvantage by participating. That often led to episodes that weren’t very insightful and felt empty by the standards of the training camp version.
Florio points to three possibilities as to why the NFL has been mum on in-season Hard Knocks: “One, they’ve decided not to announce the division in advance. Two, they’ve yet to pick the division. Three, they’ve decided not to do it at all.”
There are certainly reasons why the NFL wouldn’t want to pick a division yet. For one, the league could choose a division mid-season to ensure there are interesting storylines for whichever division they pick. Last year’s show following the NFC East, for instance, didn’t have a lot of compelling storylines by the time the show began. That could be avoided simply by waiting to select a division until the middle of the season.
But there’s also reason to think the NFL may simply do away with the in-season format entirely. After all, the league stopped doing the offseason version of Hard Knocks after just one spring following the New York Giants, in no small part because teams didn’t want to end up with egg on their face like Joe Schoen did in his infamous Saquon Barkley phone call. So there is precedent for the league to just end the in-season version for good.
For now, it seems the NFL is maintaining its flexibility by not saying anything one way or the other.