The third season of NFL Icons begins Saturday night with an episode on Jim Brown, with that new hour episode premiering on the linear MGM+ premium cable channel (formerly Epix) at 10 p.m. ET/PT and also available on the MGM+ streaming service. That will be followed by episodes covering Bill Cowher, Mike Singletary, and Charles Woodson, premiering each subsequent Saturday night for the next three weeks. Ahead of this season, NFL Films’ Paul Camarata (the series producer of NFL Icons) spoke to AA about the show and how it stands out from other content they produce, with him noting that the added length of these episodes (thanks to them airing on MGM+ rather than NFL Network or other spots) can be useful in storytelling.
“Icons is distinct from some of the other shows we’ve done in terms of a couple of areas,” he said. “Let’s start with the duration. The format and the space that our partners at MGM+ give us open up the door for us to dig into things, just from a runtime standpoint, that we’re often not able to do.”
“A lot of one-hour films, as you probably know, are about 45-minute television hours [to make space for ad breaks]. But with MGM+, that sort of premium cable hour, we have a window where I think we can go up to 58 minutes, and most of these films are around 50 to 52 minutes. So it starts with that.”
Camarata said another benefit with MGM+ is their appreciation of NFL Films’ archives and unique archival material.
“The other thing that MGM+ really values, and that we love that they value, is that they are big fans of our NFL Films archives. What that means, and what that looks like, and how it shows up on the screen, is these figures, because they are icons, because they’re all Hall of Famers (although that’s not a requirement), they are figures in NFL history that we’ve been documenting going back 50,60 years. Some longer in the case of Jim Brown with some of the elements we dug up on him.”
“So we’re able to shine a light on those archives, and we’re able to use that space we have on the screen to show the evolution of an athlete and a human really, how someone ages on screen by showing different interviews that have been done, sometimes in five-year increments for 40 years. And that’s what they look like, what they sound like, the charm of how their fashion or their hairstyles have changed, but most importantly, how their perspectives have changed.”
Camarata said that can be notable for seeing subjects’ views change over time.
“In many cases, you’ll get to track with an individual how their viewpoint about something is the same as it was 40 years ago. In other cases, it may have evolved. So I think the format really lets us stretch our legs as storytellers to give you different faces of these individuals. You know their faces, you know their names, you know their voices, and to a certain extent their stories. But we definitely feel there are elements of their stories that you don’t know that you’ll get out of a NFL Icons episode.”
Another element of these episodes is never-before-broadcast footage or images, which is remarkable considering how prominent the subjects are. Camarata said some of that is straight research.
“When we do longform things, and again, when we revisit subjects with the lens of time, every time looking into a topic you might have another opportunity to find another thing. It could be as simple as another photograph that no one’s ever seen before. So in the case of Jim Brown, we dug up photos of him as a grade schooler in Manhasset, Long Island, whether it’s in his class pictures, as a lacrosse player, as a basketball player, as a baseball player, images of this iconic American when he was 10-12 years old.”
He said another thing there is going through those internal archives and finding useful material they recorded, but didn’t broadcast for one reason or another.
“In other cases, it’s as simple as looking in-house. When we do films on these iconic figures, I’ll take Bill Cowher for instance but it applies to all of them, it’s not unusual for us to go interview someone for two to three hours, whether it’s for a biography about themselves or for a specific game or a specific season.”
“Obviously, not a lot of that material’s going to make the light of day when you’re putting together a show, for example, about a Steelers’ Super Bowl season, and you interview 10-12 people for two to three hours each. Every one of those interviews has stories that don’t make that show.”
Camarata said there’s one specific case of that in the Cowher episode that led to them going further elsewhere.
“Going back for a Cowher episode, we’re able to dig into an anecdote that we recorded that we just never used. And then obviously you can go down the rabbit hole: ‘Right, we have this story about Bill Cowher giving a pep talk at the 1978 Tangerine Bowl to his NC State teammates, we’ve never heard that story, we’ve never used that.’ And then we can go back and find the images that correspond to that. And what you’re left with is really new layers that you’re unearthing for the viewers.”
The subjects in S3 of NFL Icons are all quite different, including from their positions (running back, coach, linebacker, and defensive back. Camarata said that’s a goal for them when planning out a season.
“We wanted some diversity. We wanted diversity in age, the age of the subject but also the age in which they played, because you end up learning things about different slices of the world when you tell stories that live in different eras. We wanted diversity of viewpoint, really: one guy’s a coach, the other three were players. Jim Brown was a running back in an era when that was the most important thing you could be in pro football.”
“When we put together the programming slate, we wanted to have all angles covered,” Camarata said. “They’re obviously all icons, there are angles that are throughlines that bind them together. But we want a viewer when they tune in every week to hear different elements of different journeys that helped paint the picture of pro football.”
Despite those difference in subjects, though, Camarata said they approach those subjects similarly when it comes to new interviews, with the main difference only coming with posthumous episodes like Brown where they can’t interview the main subject.
“With all the subjects that are still with us, I think we take the same approach. This is a case where we don’t do a three-hour interview, I think about all these interviews are about 90 minutes, and really our goal is to get new perspectives. And get answers to the questions we’ve never asked before, for some reason or no reason.”
Camarata said there’s also value to asking previously-asked questions to see if the subject’s views have changed.
“In some cases, they’re questions we’ve asked a lot. But we do want to take that temperature to see if as someone has aged, their perspective and their lens of reflection has changed. So maybe they can give us something on that Super Bowl or that game that we’ve never heard before.”
“So I think we always want to be digging. But also on Icons, we want to be treetops enough that we can sort of see the big picture of what their life has become.”
Another interesting part of the Brown episode comes from a quote he gave to NFL Films in a 1994 interview: “Although most people think that the quarterback is the premier player, I think the running back, if he’s a dominating player, will be the most important player in football. Running back, especially because you need speed, balance, power, quickness and intelligence. Most running backs are born. And I played running back all my life.” That quote stands out now considering the amount of stories on running backs and how teams and analysts value them this offseason.
“I think that’s one of the funny things about telling stories and revisiting stories,” Camarata said. “Because you see things in a new light. Clearly when Jim Brown was saying that, coming out of the 60s, having played in the 60s and 70s, the running back was the key position. But now that’s changed, and we’ve seen that debate rage.”
“And there’s some irony in that the NFL Honors award for most outstanding running back was just renamed for Jim Brown in February, and then he passes right before the summer of big headlines about running backs not being valued. And part of it’s as simple as the evolution of strategy in the game, that changed the shape of what a running back has to do, what their workload is.”
Camarata said Brown is also notable to profile considering how he became a star despite the factors arrayed against him.
“So I think it’s interesting to get context and to get the context of not just where we are, but also where we’ve been. You think about Jim Brown, he became a massive star in the 50s and 60s. Now this is an era when pro football was not the predominant sport in America. He didn’t play baseball and he wasn’t a boxer. And he wasn’t a quarterback.”
“And let’s be honest, he was an African-American in an era when many of the biggest marquee figures, whether it was in sponsorships or being put into media positions, often were not African-American. In all that context, Jim Brown’s talent, his will, his determination, his abilities, rose up within his own era to make him someone that historically stands alone. His really is a singular life in American history in the 20th century.”
And he said the Brown episode, the only posthumous one in this batch, is also a good look at how NFL Icons has changed since its beginnings. He said it also helps to show how they want to keep evolving.
“One place you’ll see the evolution is in the posthumous episodes. In year one, we did Vince Lombardi and Steve Sabol, in year two we did John Madden and Walter Payton, and this year, we did Jim Brown. When we can’t do the new single interview, it really challenges us, not just as storytellers from a research and editing standpoint, but as filmmakers to come up with something that’s interesting, something that’s appropriate, something that can help bring that person to life.”
“Now, every episode of Icons, all 20 of them over the three seasons, really leans into the ‘In their own words’ sort of model of letting the icon tell his own story through our own archives. But if you look at the Walter Payton episode, we interviewed his two children, Jarrett and Brittney Payton. For Jim Brown, we didn’t do new interviews, but we did this entirely unique within the series visual conceit where we filmed a drive-in movie theater to create this visual skin and universe to tell the story of Brown because of his star status, because of his role in Hollywood.”
“We’re always trying to look for, whether its a film technique or an archival element, something within the film. Steve Sabol, we interviewed Peyton Manning and Andrea Kremer, we found two individuals that we felt could be really impactful in demonstrating the context of the icon from the worlds that their relationships came from. I think that’s an evolution that will always continue, because when you can’t do a new interview, it gives you a different puzzle to try and put together.”
Season 3 of NFL Icons premieres Saturday with that Brown episode at 10 p.m. ET/PT on MGM+ linearly, and is also available on MGM+’s streaming service.
