The New York Giants have never appeared on Hard Knocks. That’s a fact, but it’s one that might change during this offseason. Of course, there’s always plenty of fanbases each year that believe the league is going to select their team to appear on the documentary show, and only one team can actually be chosen, but according to the league rules, the Giants could potentially be forced to appear whether the organization approves or not.
They don’t have a first-year head coach, haven’t appeared on the show in the last 10 seasons, and haven’t made the playoffs in back to back years. Because they check off all of those boxes, they wouldn’t have a choice if the league forced them to appear. For those reasons, and because of the team’s current situation, there’s been a fair amount of speculation about the Giants being chosen.
Last week, an NFL.com article made the prediction that the Giants are the most likely team out of all 32 to be selected to be on the show this season. The reasoning for it seems pretty solid. There’s a lot of compelling storylines, good or bad, around the team right now.
In addition to the team’s big-ticket appeal, there are some great stories to track, chief among them the looming end of the Eli era. We could have a young hotshot to push the old QB, which would be extra spicy. There’s also reigning Offensive Rookie of the Year Saquon Barkley plus that Odell guy everyone loves to talk about.
But there’s not many Giants fans that will push for the team to be featured on the show, even if it is looking likely. If anything, the general feeling might be one of annoyance, for the most part. Having cameras around means distractions, and Hard Knocks has never been an amazingly popular show.
Does the added entertainment factor of having a documentary to watch during training camp outweigh the possible negatives, which mainly stem from distractions? Would you even bother to watch the show if it covered the Giants, or would you just assume that it won’t provide anything outside of fairly generic and sanitized quotes and moments rather than a real look on the team?
Those are among the few questions that are present now that the speculation is picking up about the Giants being featured. Distractions aside, though, the show would definitely add some more interest to a part of the offseason that could sometimes use more of it.