NFL’s Hard Knocks is back, and this year the New York Jets are the team in front of the lens. Last season, there was considerable hype around this young Jets team. Garrett Wilson won offensive rookie of the year, Sauce Gardner took home defensive rookie of the year, and other young players showed lots of promise. That being said, where they lacked performance was on offense. This past summer, however, the Jets struck a jackpot with Aaron Rodgers. Rodgers is a four time MVP and Super Bowl Champion, and his addition immediately puts the Jets near the top of the list for Super Bowl contenders.
This first episode was heavily focused on Rodgers’ impact on the organization. After last year’s abysmal job by Zach Wilson, the whole team is over the moon to have an elite player like him as their field general. One of the better parts of the episode is an awesome montage of him throwing DIMES and players reacting to how ridiculous the passes are.
Another great montage happens when the aforementioned rookies of the year line up against each other snap after snap. It’s clear to a casual fan that Garrett Wilson and Sauce Gardner are immensely talented, but having this inside scoop of their relationship and respect for each other makes you appreciate them on a whole other level.
One part of the first episode that I thought was a little wonky was the Nathaniel Hackett and Sean Payton beef. If you hadn’t seen, a couple of weeks ago, Payton (who’s the Denver’s head coaching replacement for Hackett) took some shots at Hackett for his mishaps last season:
Aaron Rodgers, Robert Salah, and others took offense to these comments, firing back at Payton for targeting another coach:
What I don’t understand is how Sean Payton is in the wrong here. I mean…just look at the Broncos preseason predictions for last season, and then take a look at their results. The numbers speak for themselves.
However, if you need any other persuasion to make you understand just how bad Hackett was, watch this video:
This guy stunk, and the world of football knows it. I’m not saying he is a bad offensive coordinator or that he can’t thrive in other systems, it’s just a fact of life that he was the worst coach in the league for the 2022/23 season.
Sean Payton stating that fact shouldn’t have brought on the scrutiny that it did. There totally should have been some beef between the teams, possibly spawning a new AFC rivalry, but instead, Sean Payton got looked at like a Yankees fan at Fenway. The media’s reaction shouldn’t have been: “I can’t believe he called him that! What a horrible human!”. It should have been: “Wow, Payton called out Hackett. I can’t wait to see them go against each other on October eighth!”. The NFL needs some old fashioned drama, and right when an opportunity presented itself, the media shut it down.
My final note is on the filming policy for this year’s Hard Knocks. In all past seasons, Hard Knocks had near unlimited access to the cutting of players and the trimming of rosters that happens every August. This year, however, that is not the case. There will supposedly be no footage of cuts whatsoever, and I am not happy about that.
Not only is it great entertainment and suspense when you are forced to wait and see which players will make the full team or not, but those moments where players are cut provide a final spotlight for them to find opportunities elsewhere. How a person takes a hit and gets back up speaks volumes on their character, so not giving players a chance to show how they handle these situations handicaps them a bit from their future.
It will be interesting to see how these decisions are shown in the upcoming weeks, but for now we just have to wait for the next episode. Let me know your thoughts in the comments, and I’ll see you back here for the episode two review next Friday!