'Hard Knocks': Bears season of HBO show is proving good football isn't great TV
Expectations are soaring for the 2024 Chicago Bears and not without good reason, given the excitement created by the drafting of possible generational talent Caleb Williams at No. 1 overall followed by the brilliant receiver Rome Odunze at No. 9, not to mention the additions of Keenan Alle and D’Andre Swift to a team that already had the arrow pointing up at the end of last season.
The future’s so bright, we can’t throw any shade. The Bears have, yes, all the pieces in place to make a run for the playoffs and perhaps be among the top 10 or 12 teams in the league.
Alas, we can’t quite accord similar kudos to HBO’s “Hard Knocks: Training Camp with the Chicago Bears.” We’ve now seen three of the five episodes, and I’m going to say what I think more than a few of you might be thinking:
It’s just ... OK. Maybe even a little underwhelming.
To be clear: this is not a knock (sorry) on the quality of the production. Created by Marty Callner and spanning 23 seasons over nearly a quarter-century, “Hard Knocks” remains the gold standard in the sports documentary world. It’s a beautifully filmed series with crisp editing, a great score, perfectly timed needle drops and legendary, John Facenda-inspired narration by the great Liev Schreiber, who has been the voice of every season with the exception of the Kansas City Chiefs in 2007, when superfan Paul Rudd took over the duties.
End credits for Episode 3 of “Training Camp with the Chicago Bears” list two senior directors, four directors, 13 segment producers/editors, 21 associate producers/editors and eight cinematographers, and it shows. This is an elaborate, impressively coordinated process with an insanely demanding turnaround time, and every facet of the finished product is A-level great.
Props as well to writer Gerry Reimel, who provides Schreiber with all those fantastically memorable, borderline cheesy lines, to wit:
“Anybody in Chicago can take the L, but what they really want are the W’s.”
“Rome wasn’t built in a day, but the Bears have gone all-in. ... They selected Rome Odunze with the ninth overall pick in the draft.”
“Safety Jonathan Owens used to be a Packer, so his wife Simone [Biles] has the gear. Social media is doing somersaults over her jacket.”
The problem with this year’s edition of “Hard Knocks” — and it’s a good problem for the Bears and their fans — is that this isn’t a particularly colorful or controversial collection of personalities. From GM Ryan Poles to head coach Matt Eberflus and his staff through the team roster, they come across as a bunch of good guys who are working hard and doing everything they can to come together as a unit and do the franchise proud. That makes for a very promising football team, but a relatively staid reality show.
To be sure, we’ve had a few entertaining, human-interest moments, as when Canadian rookie Theo Benedet stripped down to a Speedo with a strategically placed bald eagle design to belt out “God Bless the USA,” or when Velus Jones Jr. told the story of how he came to acquire his beloved late ferret, Crash. We hear about Eberflus’ makeover, which is mainly him growing a beard, and we’ve had some manufactured interludes, e.g., a blues band practicing at Rosa’s Lounge intercut with a training montage, and DJ Moore and family visiting the Museum of Ice Cream. (No offense to the Museum of Ice Cream, but it’s been around for only a couple of years and is hardly a Chicago institution.)
When it comes to high drama and crazy hijinks, however, the 2024 Bears aren’t even in the same league as the featured teams in a number of previous seasons of “Hard Knocks.”
The very first season in 2001 featured the Baltimore Ravens and larger-than-life personalities Shannon Sharpe, Rod Woodson, Tony Siragusa and Ray Lewis, while the 2008 season spotlighted the Dallas Cowboys, with their crabby coach Wade Phillips and the likes of Martellus Bennett, Pacman Jones and Tony Romo. In 2010, the New York Jets took center stage, with head coach Rex Ryan delivering an expletive-filled tirade to his team that ended with, “Let’s go eat a god- - - - snack.”
More recently, the 2018 season was a memorable trainwreck, with the Cleveland Browns coming off an 0-16 season and head coach Hue Jackson and the front office trying to right the ship as No. 1 overall draft Baker Mayfield joined the mix. A year later, we had the then-Oakland Raiders, with the polarizing but never boring Jon Gruden as head coach, and Antonio Brown showing up at camp with “extreme frostbite” from a cryotherapy session gone wrong and then getting into a battle with the NFL over his preferred helmet.
The Bears? Coach Eberflus likes to hand out nicknames. Caleb Williams is an enormously likable and charismatic presence who could become the most popular athlete in Chicago since Michael Jordan. Rookie punter Tory Taylor (who has All-Pro potential) is Australian. Owens is married to the most decorated gymnast in history. Undrafted rookie Ian Wheeler has deferred acceptance to medical school to pursue his NFL dream.
It’s all very well and nice, but for sheer must-watch value, there’s little chance “Training Camp with the Bears” will crack the Top 10 of “Hard Knocks” seasons.
And for that we should be grateful.