For the first time, football fans got a sneak peek into the NFL offseason of the New York Giants in the inaugural season of HBO’s Hard Knocks Offseason. That docuseries highlighted some very difficult conversations within the organization regarding personnel decisions on the team.
The debut season of the spin-off show from HBO and NFL Films was largely centered around Giants’ general manager Joe Schoen, who was of course tasked with turning their roster into a contender for the 2024-25 season.
As always, fans are quite critical of any general manager when it comes to personnel decisions in the offseason. But the unprecedented access into these decisions on this season of Hard Knocks led to even more criticism for the Giants amongst fans and media members alike.
With this in mind, Chicago Bears’ general manager Ryan Poles seems to believe that the offseason version of the show may be difficult for HBO to pull off in the future. And that’s particularly notable considering how Poles is currently featured on the traditional training camp version of Hard Knocks, which has had its own challenges finding willing teams in the past. (It’s unclear how willing the Bears were to do that show this year; their executives had nice things to say when chosen, but they were one of three teams who could be forced to do it the way the New York Jets were last year.)
“Yeah, that’s a tough one for me,” said Poles during an appearance on the Hoge and Jahns podcast on Monday. “I think that moving forward they are going to have a hard time finding a team. There is no show unless there’s access. And you gotta go through all the different scenarios.
“That’s a lot of internal conversations. And I struggle sometimes with conversations about players. There’s a business side of things. We try to be as transparent as possible. But I don’t know if it needs to get out to everyone.”
The training camp edition of the show that Poles is involved with obviously includes some of the same behind-the-scenes footage. For years now, some of the most anticipated content in each season of the show is typically the sit-downs where general managers tell players on the fringe of making the roster whether the did or did not make the team.
However, the offseason edition saw Schoen really open himself up to years of scrutiny that was captured on national television if things happen to go wrong this coming season. In particular, letting fan favorite running back Saquon Barkley depart to an NFC East rival in free agency certainly has the potential to blow up in his face.
Chances are, other GMs around the league seemingly feel exactly the way that Poles does about the format of the offseason Hard Knocks series. So he may very well be correct in his assessment that unless there is less access involved in the offseason show moving forward, other NFL teams could be apprehensive about participating.
