The NFL’s offseason edition of “Hard Knocks” will get a second season after all, but with a very surprising team as the subject.
Bill Belichick’s North Carolina Tar Heels will be featured on the next edition of the show, according to Ryan Glasspiegel of Front Office Sports.
The move comes after NFL Films failed to find any NFL teams willing to appear on the show.
“Hard Knocks: Offseason” was a new entry into the HBO franchise last season, and featured the New York Giants. That allowed cameras to capture the infamous moments when team executives decided to move on from Saquon Barkley to prioritize Daniel Jones instead.
The show also captured the now-infamous viral clip in which Giants co-owner John Mara said he would “have a tough time sleeping” if Barkley wound up signing with the division rival Philadelphia Eagles, which is precisely what happened.
Given how badly the Giants’ moves worked out for them, most expected that the NFL would fail to find a team willing to subject themselves to that sort of access again. That turned out to be correct.
The bigger surprise is that Belichick is willing to let the cameras in as he embarks on his first year as North Carolina head coach. Belichick has been much more media-friendly since leaving the Patriots, but this is a level of access that few would have ever imagined he would embrace.
Presumably, Belichick thinks there is value in the publicity, and it does drive home his plan to run the Tar Heels like an NFL franchise. Since he is not coaching a traditional prestige program, the visibility might help with recruiting in the future as well.
The Tar Heels are coming off a 6-7 season as Belichick prepares for his first campaign in charge of the team. The new show could be very interesting viewing as the legendary coach gets comfortable doing the job at the college level for the first time.
