When “Hard Knocks” enters the NFL offseason season, it typically brings with it a few things: rough summer recordings of full-fledged practices, inside access to foul cups, and, for the most part, the realization that football is definitely right to the corners. This year, things are a little different, not just because HBO presents its annual series two teams for the first time, but because the shadow of the ongoing coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is still large.
Training camps are now accompanied by strict new protocols. Pre-season games have been removed from the schedule. Even SoFi Stadium, the luxurious new home for both the Los Angeles Chargers and Rams – this year’s “Hard Knocks” contestants – will have limited as no fans during their 2020 debut.
And yet, that “Hard Knocks” did not prevent him from pushing. So guess what, boys and girls? It’s time for some power ranking.
Who stood out in the premiere episode of this year’s show? Let’s get to the pecking order:
The Chargers quarterback earns bills for keeping a low profile and just going about his business, but let’s be real: it does not make for good TV. This man is the starter on the key position of an NFL team in Los Angeles, and we got a good glimpse of him up to 40 minutes into the premiere. Anyone who played Where’s Waldo and somehow tracked him down during the Cleveland Browns’ appearance on “Hard Knocks” in 2018 may not have even recognized him now that he has the untamed quarantine hair / beard combo rocket. Has Tyrod spent his lock-down in the desert?
We did not pick up a ton of goods from Taylor’s competition, but it was just enough to make you take a double take on the QB situation in LA. There’s no doubt Taylor is set to open the year under center, but how can you look at Herbert – namely his size and, as some Chargers defenders put it on Tuesday, “his balls” – and not predict that LA antsy gets around the rookie’s arm this year? Yes, we talk about hitting nets in pad-less walk-throughs, but Herbert really throws a nice pass.
3. Anthony Lynn, common man
The big news to come out of the premiere was Lynn’s early admission that he’s already tested positive for – and overcome – COVID-19. That was just the first sign that the Chargers coach is perhaps the show’s most down-to-earth star. Unlike Rams coach Sean McVay, who literally sipped his debut with rosé with his fiancée at her view of the California pool (take that, Kliff Kingsbury), Lynn turned herself in to us by grilling chicken – complete with a trial marinating brush built from his wife’s good china – and he remembers his earlier NFL days. He may not be flashy, but he really looks. Plus-one for the Chargers.
2. The coronavirus tests
Carefully, most of the first episode was spent highlighting how much the pandemic has affected typical training camp operations. But who could predict how scared NFL players would be of the nasal swabs needed to enter camp? If you’ve ever had a COVID test, you know that the swab is not exactly comfortable, but think about how many of these players make millions to beat each other on a football field. Take, for example, Casey Hayward Jr. who could not wait to test with:
Coaches are already turning this idea of ”two opponents” into 2020 – opponents and COVID – into a cliché, but if the Chargers’ coronavirus tests were any indication, well, LA could be in for a big fight this year.
1. Sean McVay as Jon Gruden
McVay’s posse entry may have been a touch too artificial compared to how we were introduced to Lynn and the Rams’ cross-state colleagues. But man, there’s something about his Gruden-esque ways that grows on you. This man hopped up his new face shield by pretending to draw plays on it. You could tell, even when he was sitting by the pool early, playing basketball with his dog, that he really ate to be on the field. And holy smoke, he sounds as much like Gruden during his Zoom-rants:
Do you know anything? No complaint about it. It’s hot like s — in the Valley, man. I got the freakin ‘sun steamin’ here. I’m sweatin ‘. I’m excited … Before anyone can move on, should I check her pants? Nobody s — themselves yet? How much better would it be if we could say, ‘Let’s get up and do what we really do and play football, go line up … This is why this Zoom game is for the birds … I f — in ‘I love football and I love you guys.
And that, friends, did not even come close to his corresponding lines of the episode:
Hey, and also, do not be the man who takes an s — in the Porta Pottys. I went in, I almost ran up, ok? Have a little more, uh, social awareness.
