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We appreciate HBO’s nod to normality in the form of the Premiere of Hard Knocks last night.
The award-winning series, which follows the educational camp of another NFL team for a summer, returns for its 15th season. And this year, “a year like neither of us in the National Football League,” sees Los Angeles Chargers coach Anthony Lynn, who proves at the most sensible time COVID-19 contracted. the bets are open. (Well, they’re on, because Vegas will take your money to hell or hell, but you understand).
With no guarantee that there will be a pro football season in 2020, and with schools temporarily canceling fall sports due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, NFL Films has stubbornly tried to capture how athletes prepare to play in this area. very abnormal moment in time. As they have for nearly two decades, with social estrangement and a number of other regulations in a position to keep everyone healthy, except injuries suffered by hard hits.
So, as you can imagine, many other things appear this season, and not just because the masks are no longer just for the box and the first one opened with the Chargers having a big meeting of the Zoom organization, the players full of as many questions about how they will actually succeed as you might have.
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To begin with, the exhibition covers two groups for the first time, the Chargers and the Rams of Los Angeles, who, from this season, will give up a box of the house in the logo of the new SoFi Stadium (which was intended to take the credit of its grand opening. July 25 with a Taylor Swift concert, still pandemic) in Inglewood.
Construction of the $5 billion site continued during the spring and summer despite various business closures imposed by national and local authorities; The Los Angeles Times reported that as of mid-July, 49 staff members (out of about 4,000) had tested positive for COVID, as had seven other people running in the adjacent NFL Media building.
The developers said last month that the 70,000-seat stadium is 97% complete. Unfortunately, most seats will be empty when football season begins.
“You exercise and exercise. And then you put yourself in a position to play a game and be on a great level and play in front of a crowd,” Rams star Aaron Donald told reporters in a video call in May. “… There’s just no emotion [no fans]. It wouldn’t be fun for me. I don’t think it’s fun to play a football game without fans.”
The hopeful days of May, full of chances that live events could take place in front of others as September arrives, seem so far away.
But there’s a first time for everything, like Major League Baseball, lately in a few weeks to a season of 60 games, and the NBA, getting ready for the playoffs at “The Bubble” in Orlando, have shown, with the resulting festival in front of a small crowd of teammates, teams, media members and dozens of cardboard clippings.
Training camps would possibly have opened officially on July 28 (Donald reported with everyone else playing), however, NFL preseason games were canceled out of caution, which automatically took some juice out of the same Hard Knocks plot. But manufacturers are convinced that there is still a desirable story to tell, if not one of the most important stories the series has ever covered.
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“This is no longer a specific team or team,” Ken Rodgers, vice president of NFL Films, told the LA Times. “It’s about the NFL as a total and what the NFL is looking to achieve. It actually represents what the whole of America is looking to do, which is walking on that line between looking to be as safe as possible while seeking to find a normality. Actually, you are in an office that seeks to recover and protect your employees.”
The Rams were on the show in 2016, their first year in Los Angeles since the team moved to St. Louis in 1995, and this is the First Appearance of the Chargers, who moved to Los Angeles from San Diego in 2017. Both failed. to qualify for the playoffs last season, just one year after the Rams tied for the top of games won in the AFC.
Therefore, even before there was an additional layer of global events infiltrating the figurative bubble in which athletes play, both groups, dressed in new uniforms and playing in a new house, went hungry in September.
The consequences of the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others have added to the sense of duty players feel when they stand in front of the public, their platform to send a message about racial equality and social justice at hand.
In a statement, Kevin Demoff, the Rams’ chief operating officer, said, “Hard Knocks gives us the opportunity to document how our entire players and organizations, our community, address socioeconomic inequalities and injustices, and help build Los Angeles in those difficult times.”
Lynn told The Times in June as protests continued across the country after Floyd’s death in the custody of Minneapolis Police on May 25: “I need to make this world a more important position for the next generation, not just for minorities, but for everyone. Believe in diversity, I believe in inclusion, and if you’re in it, you can’t remain silent. You can’t just stare and watch. You have to say something, man.” (On the show, Lynn tells her players in a Zoom assembly that they will respect their right to protest, or not, during a game, and agree that they are all in the same aspect of the biggest existing problem.)
In July, the 11 professional sports groups in Greater Los Angeles combined to shape the Alliance, described as “a five-year global commitment to stimulate investment and have an effect on social justice through sport” for the Play Equity Fund in Los Angeles and Accelerate Change Ensemble Anaheim.
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Meanwhile, the Rams work out in Thousand Oaks, California, while the Chargers’ practice center is in Costa Mesa, a few hours’ drive in Los Angeles. There are about 30 Hard Knocks people on site, all dressed in touch-tracking masks and bracelets, filming the action from over the same age with extrapowerful zoom.
Teams also spend as much time outdoors as possible, with Rams installing their two weight rooms in tents (always limited to another 15 people at a time) and transforming the cafeteria into a takeaway setup. At either facility, the boys are seen checking their temperature and doing COVID and antibody tests, grinding their teeth with swabs in their nose and exclaiming about the “big needle” used to draw blood. The hand sanitizer and Clorox wet wipes have their day in the sun.
“I’ve been given some camera robots following me right now,” Rams coach Sean McVay told the Los Angeles Daily News. “Every move I make in myArray has no privacy. So, time I would probably spend to my house, otherwise, to verify and get some of that privacy. I can’t say anything without feeling like I’m getting in trouble. “
Typically, other team members rotate in and out, however, in the NBA Bubble style, a team has been assigned to the site to stay for the preseason.
“This year, we can stretch our legs and be creative,” Rodgers of NFL Films told The Times. “We don’t necessarily have the answers yet, however, it’s our job to perceive them. That’s why we get paid.”
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But while the cameras don’t focus as much on players and coaches inside their homes (although the charming kitchen and garden fireplace, McVay, have played well), and more conversations are almost never taking place, this season is still crowded. intimate and non-public scenes with couples, pets and parents. Tears flow, muscles flex, we’re talking garbage. And, as always, spontaneous hilarity occurs, as when McVay tells his players to have more “social conscience” than, um… abusing Porta Potties.
Joey Bosa, the defensive star final of the Chargers who has just signed a $135 million contract extension, told the Daily News that he is on the hunt for the game for the first time. “I’m a big FAN of HBO,” he said. “So it’s going to be fun. I just want to take a look at my tongue there.”
Judging by the first episode, no one won this memo. (But don’t worry, it’s HBO).
When asked about his recommendation to his teammates on how to take care of the cameras that followed them, Chargers quarterback Tyrod Taylor, who was on screen in 2018 as a member of the Cleveland Browns, told the Daily News: “Just to be yourself. Don’t do it. That’s a distraction. I saw it anyway. Be yourself.”
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Lynn encouraged her boys in the most sensible hour last night, “Be patient … There’s going to be chaos, and that’s going to change. He’ll come every day. The goals, the goals might not change. I can’t, I promise you probably won’t get infected. I got infected.”
Cut the looks on the faces of the players, through real-time revelation.
“I’ve spoken to other people who say they’ve had enough of this virus,” Lynn continued. “What does that mean? Let me tell you something, they didn’t promise you next year. They didn’t promise you tomorrow. What I have to do is restrict your exposures, but when the fucking whistle blows, we’ll kick someone’s ass and play footballArray.. Put yourself in a position for chaos. Kiss him.”
Reinforced education next week, and if everything goes accordingly, the efforts of any of the teams in the preseason will be rewarded with the normal start of the season on September 13, the Chargers on the road oppose the Cincinnati Bengals, the Home Rams and the Dallas Cowboys.
Because the annulment of the season by a pandemic that’s sweeping would be the hardest blow of all. And no one makes promises.