The Giants' debut on HBO's 'Hard Knocks' will be the first of its kind
Giants assistant general manager Brandon Brown, left, and GM Joe Schoen will be featured prominently in new "Hard Knocks" show. Credit: Matt Swensen/New York Football G
It remains one of the most memorable quotes in “Hard Knocks” history.
In 2010, Giants president John Mara was speaking to the Daily News about when the team might appear on the series when he said this:
“That announcement will come when I'm next to my father in Gates of Heaven Cemetery."
Fourteen years later, Mara is alive and well . . . and the Giants are set to make their “Hard Knocks” debut at last.
But this will not be the training camp version that Mara was referring to in 2010, which that year featured the Jets. Rather, it will be something completely different.
“Hard Knocks: Offseason with the New York Giants,” a five-part series premiering on HBO and Max on July 2, for the first time will follow a team as it navigates free agency and the draft.
“During what we call the ‘offseason’ because there are no games, these folks are not off,” co-director Paul Camarata told Newsday. “They are working pedal to the metal, sometimes six, seven days a week, 14 to 16 hours a day for weeks on end.
“Just crunching the numbers, watching the film, traveling the country . . . I think it's showing that part of the football machine with a depth we've never seen.”
The series, a joint effort of HBO, NFL Films, Skydance Sports and the Giants, will face a challenge the training camp and in-season “Hard Knocks” do not: a lack of on-field action and of players in general.
Mara, general manager Joe Schoen, coach Brian Daboll and their colleagues will be the stars, which will mean trying to make people talking in rooms as interesting as people throwing slow-motion, NFL Films-style pass spirals.
“That was kind of daunting to everyone when we first started this,” co-director Emily Cameron said. “I think it's one of the things that makes it super unique.
“As we've been putting this together, everyone who's worked on ‘Hard Knocks’ for the past 20-plus years has been like, ‘We have never seen anything like this.’ ”
The official trailer shows Schoen telling Daboll what it would take to land defensive end Brian Burns, Schoen speaking to Saquon Barkley about his status and Schoen fielding a call from the Falcons, who drafted eighth overall, as the Giants were on the clock at No. 6.
Teams around the league have grown used to navigating NFL Films crews being around 24/7, including the Jets at training camp last summer.
This is new, though, so how the showrunners handle the Giants will help shape how other teams view this concept.
The Giants can veto any content they deem too competitively sensitive for public consumption, but the camera operators largely had free rein.
Cameron said there was a lot to learn on the filmmakers’ part as they explored a different part of the NFL calendar, so they appreciated the team’s input.
The concept originated with the Giants, according to Nilay Shah, their senior vice president of marketing and brand strategy.
He said as part of its 100th season, the team was looking for innovative ways to tell its story on a “national scale” and hit upon this.
“The idea was building this roster during the 100th season,” he said. “How can we give people a peek under the hood in a way they've never experienced before?”
The drama might not be the same as Aaron Rodgers guiding the Jets through his first camp or a fringe player barely making the roster — or getting cut. But there is no shortage of material in the offseason that matters to fans.
“I think that intensity is equally matched in this new show, but in a new corner of the universe that we've never shown quite such a bright light on,” Camarata said. “It really is those personnel departments that are the stars of the show.”
Camarata said the approach is more observing than interviewing, which allows the true personalities of figures such as Schoen and Daboll to emerge.
“We kind of get to see them almost in their natural environment,” Camarata said.
Cameron said that once the co-directors established a level of trust within the building, the Giants were “awesome to work with.”
One specific area into which fans likely will want behind-the-scenes insight is what the Giants in general and Schoen in particular truly think about quarterback Daniel Jones.
Many wondered if they would seek a potential replacement for him in the first round of this year's draft.
Camarata declined to get into specifics on that subject.
“You will get insight into a lot of their thought processes on players across the league and across college football, including their own,” he said.
Shah said with remote cameras in Schoen’s office and the draft room, the NFL Films operation was not as intrusive as one might imagine, based on the multi-camera training camp model.
As for the scouts, Shah said, “I don't think anyone's looking for the limelight. But I think it really highlights the collaborative nature of how you build a team.
“There are going to be things in here that people have never seen.”
Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.