For the first time in franchise history, the NFL has selected the Buffalo Bills as the featured team of “Hard Knocks,” the HBO documentary series that follows one team through training camp from late July into August.
Almost every year that Bills coach Sean McDermott and general manager Brandon Beane have been in charge of the franchise, the team has been ineligible to be featured on the HBO series due to making the playoffs for five straight years from 2019 to 2023. Despite extending that consecutive playoff streak to six in 2024, the NFL opened the doors to the Bills appearing on the series during the league’s annual meetings in early April.
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Before that vote, all playoff teams could choose to be exempt from “Hard Knocks” consideration. However, that stipulation was removed in April, leaving teams exempt only if they had appeared in the series during the previous eight years or had a first-year head coach. Since the show had never featured the Bills, and McDermott has been their coach since 2017, it left the door wide open to the possibility.
Even with the potential eligible team pool growing in size by a great deal with the new parameters, it’s not difficult to see why the Bills would be a top draw for the series.
They boast the league’s reigning Most Valuable Player in franchise quarterback Josh Allen, who is squarely in the prime of his career and one of the league’s biggest stars. The Bills have been among the most winningest franchises over the last eight seasons, making the playoffs in seven of the eight years McDermott and Beane have been in charge. Plus, it will give the national audience their first in-depth glimpse at the Bills following their dramatic exit from the postseason in a three-point loss to the Chiefs in the AFC Championship Game.
The Bills, who are in search of their first Super Bowl berth since the 1993 season, are also a bit of a throwback team by today’s NFL training camp standards. They are one of the last remaining clubs that travel away from their home facilities for the beginning of camp. The team announced last week that they would head back to St. John Fisher University for the start of camp. The university is about a 90-minute drive away in Pittsford, N.Y., a surrounding suburb of Rochester. The Bills have been holding their early camp practices at St. John Fisher, except for the COVID-impacted years, since 2000. The players all stay in dorms on campus during the multi-week stay, likely making an opportunity for “Hard Knocks” to show the camaraderie of the Bills’ camp that has kept them choosing to go back to Pittsford year after year.
The show’s premiere featuring the Bills is set for Aug. 5 on HBO Max.
(Photo of Sean McDermott and Josh Allen: Bryan M. Bennett / Getty Images)
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