Offseason ‘Hard Knocks’ is coming back

Hard Knocks is returning to the offseason for the first time in three years.

The NFL announced on Wednesday that the offseason version of Hard Knocks is returning for 2027, its first offseason edition since following the New York Giants in 2024. Rather than centering on a single team, NFL Films and HBO will use the division format the show has run during the season the past two years, first with the AFC North in 2024 and then the NFC East last year. The offseason series will replace the in-season version, meaning there will be no in-season Hard Knocks in 2026.

The Athletic first reported the show’s return and the shift to a division-based format ahead of Wednesday’s official announcement.

In-season Hard Knocks debuted in the 2024-25 season, with NFL Films following the four AFC North teams during the crucial stretch run of the regular season. Fans were generally receptive at first, though coaches and teams had valid concerns about being at a competitive disadvantage by participating. That often led to episodes that weren’t very insightful and felt empty by the standards of the training camp version.

Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio previously noted that the NFL had gone dark on which division, if any, would be featured this season, blowing past the same May timeline it hit the year before when it named the NFC East. Florio said the league didn’t respond to multiple inquiries from PFT on the matter, and offered three possible explanations: “One, they’ve decided not to announce the division in advance. Two, they’ve yet to pick the division. Three, they’ve decided not to do it at all.”

Following the New York Giants in the 2024 offseason, we saw access and insights like never before, including the franchise’s painstaking decision to let star running back Saquon Barkley walk in free agency. Barkley, of course, signed with the Eagles, rushed for 2,000 yards, won a Super Bowl, and the rest is history.

But there was no offseason version of Hard Knocks in 2025 or 2026, largely because it was too successful and too insightful for its own good. As the Giants struggled and the Eagles soared, fans kept coming back to Big Blue’s front-office decisions as internet fodder for making fun of the team. Every time Barkley broke off a big run, you were likely to see the clip of Giants owner John Mara saying he did not want to see the team’s most popular player go and play for the Eagles.

In an interview with Sports Business Journal, NFL Films executive Keith Cossrow said the show was one of the best the outlet has put together. But ultimately, it was too good for NFL teams to be comfortable with ever doing again because of the virality and popularity of the clips on social media.

“When that one or two clips about Saquon got removed and isolated and blew up on social media, and as we’ve seen, have taken on a life of their own, that certainly gives people pause in the NFL and in every other walk of life about doing these sorts of shows,” Cossrow told SBJ. “It’s funny, we all want to go viral, right? Not for the wrong reasons, but it’s a measure of success in the world we live in today. But it can also go in directions that nobody can predict.”<

That unpredictability was too much for NFL franchises to stomach on their own, which is likely why the league is bringing the offseason show back as a division format instead of a single-team one. No owner wants to be the next John Mara, and no general manager wants to be the next Joe Schoen, but spreading the exposure across four teams means no single front office has to carry that risk alone.