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Once considered an honor to be selected for HBO’s NFL reality show, “Hard Knocks” has become a burden that most teams hope to avoid. But the league is fully onboard with the docuseries, even removing the exemption for teams that made the playoffs, so any franchise that hasn’t recently appeared on “Hard Knocks” is fair game. This season, the show will feature the Buffalo Bills.
The Bills managed to avoid the intrusive cameras of “Hard Knocks” since it debuted in 2001. But Buffalo was conscripted into participation this year, forced to open its training camp to HBO’s film crew. And the Bills are not happy about the situation.
But “Hard Knocks” executive producer Ken Rodgers is thrilled to cover the Bills. With the team finding success but falling short of a championship over the last five seasons, covering Buffalo’s 2025 training camp offers a unique experience.
“The drama is a self-aware, confident drama in that ‘We know who we are, and we know what we have to do. The question is, can we do it?’ The stakes are important because they’re that close to the ultimate goal. That’s great television,” Rodgers said, per Tim Graham of The Athletic.
“That’s certainly a really interesting story at training camp, when there’s a lot more at stake for teams that are trying to get back on track,” Rodgers noted.
However, the Bills’ series “will be a different-feeling show because the drama will be elsewhere. It won’t be drama in trying to fix what’s broken. It’s going to be drama in trying to take one small step forward and win that Super Bowl. I guess that’s a humongous step, but it’s one more step,” he added.
The Bills have won the AFC East five-straight years and they’ve reached the playoffs in seven of the last eight seasons. A well-deserved stretch of success after the fanbase endured a 17-year playoff drought.
But over the last five seasons the team has lost in the divisional round three times and the championship round twice, falling short of reaching its first Super Bowl since 1993. And the Bills have been eliminated from the playoffs by the Kansas City Chiefs in four of the last five seasons.
With Josh Allen in his prime and coming off his first MVP Award following an excellent 2024 campaign, the Bills are still in their Super Bowl window. And HBO hopes to capture something special in their 2025 training camp.
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