“Dread it, run from it, destiny arrives all the same,” Thanos once said. He might have been talking about the New York Jets and the likelihood that they’ll be selected to be featured in the 2023 preseason version of Hard Knocks.
While it seems like no NFL team wants the honor of being documented for the HBO/NFL Films series, the Jets have been publicly pushing to avoid the attention for weeks, even as all signs pointed to them as the most obvious pick. While the NFL would prefer “volunteers, not hostages,” they’ll also gladly put Aaron Rodgers and the Jets on center stage even if they’re less than thrilled about it.
Boomer Esiason and Gregg Giannotti will be spending a ton of time discussing the Jets this season regardless of whether or not they end up on the show. However, to the crew of WFAN’s Boomer & Gio, it seems like a no-brainer.
“There is a lot of stuff happening with the New York Jets, and it’d be great TV and great theater,” Gregg Giannotti said on Boomer & Gio on Tuesday. “But they somehow think that these cameras coming in and documenting this stuff is going to screw up their season.”
Jerry Recco, the show’s morning anchor, added that while the franchise clearly doesn’t want the added layer of scrutiny, it’s part of the deal for a franchise in its position.
“They probably, as it sounds, would just prefer to be left out and deal with the other distractions that they’re going to have the way they have to,” said Recco. “This is another layer to it. I get it, but at the end of the day though, they’re going to have to say, ‘Okay, the cameras are going to be in; we’re going to watch and that’ll be that.’
“If you’re the NFL and you’ve got to make this decision, and we talked about this – there is no other choice… It has to be the Jets. Whether they like it or not, it’s going to be them.”
New quarterback Aaron Rodgers isn’t the biggest fan of media coverage (or is he?), but given the savior expectations that he brings with him to New York, Giannotti thinks he and the team just need to get over it and accept reality (which, to be fair, is not Rodgers’ strong suit).
