A "Hard Knocks In Season" AFC North banner. A “Hard Knocks In Season” AFC North banner. (HBO.)

This NFL season, NFL Films has taken quite a different tack than normal with its Hard Knocks In Season franchise covering an entire division (the AFC North) rather than a single team.

That’s created challenges for the Hard Knocks team.

Ken Rodgers, the vice president and executive producer at NFL Films, spoke to Awful Announcing last week on this year’s Hard Knocks In Season (whose fourth episode premieres Tuesday night at 9 p.m. ET/PT on HBO and Max). He said this year has posed some surprising hurdles for the Hard Knocks team, with one being more teams meaning more shot footage they have to consider.

“Boy, we are learning the challenges as we go,” Rodgers said. “We expected some of them, one of them being the amount of footage that we knew we would capture just getting through it. It’s a very hard show with one team: I think we shoot about a 400-to-1 ratio, 400 hours for every hour that airs.”

Rodgers said there’s a further challenge thanks to the quick turnaround the Hard Knocks team faces in producing an episode to premiere each Tuesday during this run, the highest hurdle NFL Films has ever faced.

“Just getting through it is hard enough. Getting through it in real-time is even harder. Getting through it with four teams in real time, it is really the hardest production we’ve ever done. In the 60-plus years of  NFL Films, I can safely say this is the most difficult production process we’ve gone through.

Rodgers said some of these challenges were predictable, but some weren’t.

“We expected it would be hard. The difference that we maybe didn’t expect is how much great material we would get on different players that we just can’t get to yet. The particular challenge is there are, you know, 52 incredible stories on every team that you want to cover. But when you have four teams, you have over 200 players, who, well, they’re all good stories, but who do we spend time with?

“So it’s really been a challenge to make sure that we are telling the right stories that are indicative of what the team is going through. Also, we don’t want to just tell an individual story, we want to tell an individual story that represents the whole, and make sure that we’re spreading it around because we want to, we want to see a lot of stories.”

Those challenges have led to episodes that vary a lot from week to week.

“If you saw the episode last week, we chose a player from each team to really kind of just tell the scope of the entire franchise that week. And now this week they’re playing each other, so, it’s a completely different episode with a different focus, it’s all about rivalry this week. So every week changes to an extent that I’m not sure that we could have predicted because we’re so used to following one team where the storyline is the same throughout.”

As per the actual staffing and footage, Rodgers said they didn’t quadruple their footage from the one-team version, but they wound up tripling it versus a planned doubling.

“It’s not quite four times, because if we went to four times what we filmed in Miami last year, it’s just impossible to turn it around. We planned on maybe overall, double the amount of footage. I think we’re closer to triple the footage of a normal Hard Knocks: In Season.”

He said a big challenge is having to shoot a lot that may or may not wind up relevant rather than focusing on what seems obvious.

“That’s part of the difficulty, I think, of doing documentaries in such a quick turnaround fashion. It’s the old joke at NFL Films: ‘If we could only shoot the touchdowns.’ If only we had the ability to know when something great was going to happen in a room, in a robo room where we’re filming all day in, say, a running backs’ room, well, we would only shoot that moment. We don’t know.

“So we have to shoot all day long, which means we have to go through that footage and make sure that we’re not missing any key storylines. And when you spread that across four teams, it really is a problem. That’s the secret to Hard Knocks, you can’t guess what’s gonna be the story of the week. You have to film everything.”

A difference with a division-wide Hard Knocks is a dedicated lead director and second director for each team. Rodgers said that’s vital to making the teams comfortable with the film crews.

“We actually have two directors for each region, so each team has two directors dedicated to them, a lead director and a second director. And that’s crucial just for familiarity, relationship building, consistency. It’s really about making the teams as comfortable as possible, you’re going to see the same face.

“There’s obviously lots of keys to Hard Knocks, but another key is that consistency. In summer, the six weeks that we’re there, it’s the same people there for six straight weeks. You get to know the people, you get to understand what their goal is.

“This, in the end, is a relationship business. NFL Films, more than anyone else, has always understood that. And it’s not like like they don’t know us as a company, NFL Films, we’ve all been working together for decades. But it is the one-on-one relationships that matter, and so we dedicate directors, and we also dedicate crews back here. I mean, there’s over 150 people that work on this show on a weekly basis.”

The inclusion of the Pittsburgh Steelers and head coach Mike Tomlin has made the power of relationships criticial. The Steelers have never been on Hard Knocks before, and have usually met conditions where they couldn’t be “forced” onto the offseason version of the show. And Tomlin has seemed publicly grumpy about doing this show, even if he has turned into a star of it. But Rodgers said their team’s relationship with Tomlin has been great.

“It hasn’t been contentious at all. And it’s been incredible from a storyteller standpoint to have him. We knew how good he would be on the show. Maybe he knew how good he would be on the show.”

He said the pushback from Tomlin, which has also been seen from other coaches around other versions of Hard Knocks, goes to complaints about disruptions of proven routine rather than anything specific to the show.

“Here’s the thing about coaches, and I say this about Hard Knocks, but it really goes to everywhere else: they’re creatures of habit,” Rodgers said. “Mike Tomlin and other coaches, they don’t want to play, you know, on Thursday night or Saturday, or overseas. They want to play at home on Sunday at one o’clock in a very predictable routine, because they’re creatures of habit and routine, and the less variables, the better they can focus on repeating success and and finding out what works and what doesn’t work.”

Rodgers said he understands the Hard Knocks complaints from coaches, but each coach they’ve worked with has eventually been quite receptive.

“So, to me, it’s like Thursday Night Football, or overseas, or playing at an odd time. They’re not necessarily going to jump for joy and volunteer. But when they’re chosen to do it, they understand that it’s important to the league. The league is certainly competitive, but it’s also entertaining, and there’s always a balance. So I feel like I’m never surprised that coaches say, ‘Oh, I’d rather not do that.’ I mean, I wouldn’t either.

“But I think they also understand that it’s part of the league, it’s become a huge huge part of the league, it’s certainly become something on the calendar that people look forward to in terms of the show airing. And once it’s selected, no coach has not embraced it.

“They’ve understood, ‘I’d rather not, but I’m not going to lock the doors and keep the league out to show this.’ I mean, it’s not that contentious. Preference is different than malleability. They understand what the league is about, and they’ve all been really incredible to work with.”

He said the division-wide focus is actually an asset there, providing less regular questions on Hard Knocks and “distractions” for any particular coach.

“I think another thing, at least perception-wise to the pundits of the world, is that by doing a division, you’re creating equality. ‘Hey, everyone is doing this in this division.’ There was never a disadvantage to doing Hard Knocks: the records proved that. Teams have done great, teams have done bad, there is no factor in terms of Hard Knocks affecting a season.

“But any perception is gone, they don’t have to answer questions at a press conference of why they’re doing it and another team in the division isn’t. So, I think that’s a great benefit too: we get to see things on an equal basis and get rid of a lot of the external talk about Hard Knocks being a distraction. It was never true, but we at least get to fight that perception.”

Read on for more from Rodgers on Hard Knocks‘ connections with coaches and players, the division-wide approach, the future of the Hard Knocks “universe,” and more.

About Andrew Bucholtz

Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.