As NFL league meetings wrapped up on Wednesday, the NFL and HBO announced that the Buffalo Bills were selected to host the summertime documentary series Hard Knocks.
It was a move that caught both Bills personnel and players by surprise.
Interestingly enough, the Bills have not officially acknowledged the announcement on social media. The NFL publicized Hard Knocks: Training Camp with the Buffalo Bills throughout Wednesday, with the NFL issuing a press release and flooding social media to promote the announcement. Meanwhile, radio silence from official Bills' pages.
The Bills did host a press release promoting the organization's involvement in a Hallmark holiday movie on Thursday in Orchard Park, but there was no proper mention of the Hard Knocks news.
The intriguing bit of it all: The Bills wouldn't typically be eligible for a season of Hard Knocks. Teams have been able to refuse the Hard Knocks assignment if they met one of three criteria:
- Having a first-year head coach
- Having made the playoffs within the last two seasons
- Having appeared on the series over the past 10 years.
However, the NFL seemingly loosened the rules, forcing the Bills to be the subject of the summertime documentary.
The longest tenured Bill, longsnapper Reid Ferguson commented on the change.
"My initial reaction yesterday, I didn't know that the rules had changed," Ferguson said. "I think it caught a lot of us off guard when they announced that we were gonna be on 'Hard Knocks' because not a new head coach, we made the playoffs, we haven't been on it in 10 years, but for the reasons of the other two rules."
Ferguson continued, talking about being a fan of the series, and welcoming the challenge.
"I'm a fan of watching Hard Knocks," he said. "It'll be an interesting opportunity, interesting thing that we're gonna have to go through here in training camps in a couple months, but we're all looking forward to it."