Highlights

• Hard Knocks will have new guidelines for both the offseason & in-season versions of the show.
• The in-season show will focus on an entire division instead of just one team.
• The offseason show now has fewer restrictions, allowing the showrunners to pick from a larger pool of teams.

The NFL's top-rated show, Hard Knocks (produced by HBO), has been a staple program in the preseason for over 20 years, and has expanded to offer an in-depth look at teams during the regular season since 2021.

Now, according to Ben Fischer of the Sport Business Journal, the show's parameters are about to change. The offseason version of the show will eliminate some rules to allow for the showrunners to pick from a wider array of teams, and the in-season version will focus on an entire division, rather than just one team.

The changes are sure to cause a stir among fans of the show and the teams themselves. Most teams don't enjoy the media circus that comes along with having an invasive camera crew inside their locker room, but fans have fallen in love with how much Hard Knocks showcases about the daily life of an NFL athlete.

For now, the league and HBO are set to move forward with the new guidelines.

In-Season Hard Knocks Will Focus on Entire Division

The offseason version of the show will now feature a larger pool of teams to feature

The biggest change to the show is what will happen during the season. After complaints that teams on the in-season version of Hard Knocks were at a competitive disadvantage, the league agreed to show an entire division to assuage privacy and invasiveness concerns.

The change should be a welcome one for teams, since the camera crew will be divided among four competitors, rather than just hawking over one organization. How fans of the show respond remains to be seen, but being able to see the inner workings of an entire division (and all the storylines and narratives that naturally come with the territory) is enticing.

As for which of the eight divisions will get picked, there haven't been any rules or restrictions announced, other than that a division cannot get selected if it has been featured in either of the prior two years. That means every division is up for grabs in 2024, and the more competitive ones (the AFC North, the NFC West) will likely be picked first.

As for the offseason version of the show, the restrictions that prevented a team from being selected as the subject of that season have been amended slightly. Now, the only way a team can avoid the show is as follows:

• The team has participated in the offseason version of Hard Knocks in the past eight years (down from ten years)
• The team has a first-year head coach (unchanged)
• The team is set to participate in the current season (or next season) of the in-season version of Hard Knocks (new)

The biggest change is the restriction that no longer applies: teams that make the playoffs are no longer immune from being selected for a two-year stretch. Now, teams like the Kansas City Chiefs and Pittsburgh Steelers will be eligible for the show, despite their usual regular season prowess.

GIVEMESPORT's Key Stat: Across the 18 preseason seasons of Hard Knocks, four franchises have been featured more than once: the Dallas Cowboys (three times), the New York Jets (twice), the Los Angeles Rams (twice), and the Cincinnati Bengals (twice).

The wider pool of available organizations is a direct response to last offseason's debacle, in which only four teams were available under the old guidelines. The New York Jets were eventually selected following their acquisition of quarterback Aaron Rodgers, but things needed to change given how tight the restrictions were.

The participants for the 2024 preseason and in-season seasons of Hard Knocks will be announced in June, after the 2024 NFL Draft.

Source: Ben Fischer

All statistics courtesy of Pro Football Reference unless stated otherwise.