Don’t Blame Hard Knocks If The Jets Disappoint
Aaron Rodgers and the Jets might falter, but teams featured on the HBO program typically do better than expected.
Aaron Rodgers may not like it, but the four-time MVP is going to be the NFL’s main media attraction all season long — starting with his New York Jets being featured in HBO’s Hard Knocks, reportedly against his wishes.
“They forced it down our throats, and we’ve got to deal with it,” Rodgers said of being in the documentary spotlight.
Rodgers’ love-hate relationship with the press is well-documented, and perhaps he’s worried that the pressure and scrutiny of Hard Knocks will distract the Jets from their Super Bowl aspirations. But the good news for Rodgers and Co. is this: If there’s any evidence of a curse associated with the program, it’s difficult to find.
Going back to the 2001 Baltimore Ravens — the first team featured on Hard Knocks — here’s a scatterplot of every team followed by the show (excluding those featured in-season), along with how they did relative to the forecasted win total we’d expect based on their preseason Elo ratings:
Combined, Hard Knocks teams actually beat their projected win totals over the years, 8.4 to 8.2 if we prorate everyone out to a per-17-game average. Of the 18 featured teams, 10 exceeded expectations, including five of the past six. It seems having a film crew hanging around to pick up any hint of intrasquad drama — or catch your star QB partaking in psychedelic substances — isn’t as disruptive as one might think.
If Rodgers and the Jets do fall short of expectations, it probably will have little to do with Hard Knocks. The far more likely suspects are that Rodgers is 39 years old and coming off a below-average season, while the Jets’ defense is a good candidate to regress after improving dramatically last season. (NFL defensive performances are notoriously unreliable from season to season, particularly among teams that make huge year-over-year leaps.)
According to FanDuel, the Jets have +1600 odds to win the Super Bowl, which ranks seventh-best overall and fourth in the AFC. We’ll just have to see if the HBO cameras capture anything that moves the needle on New York’s chances in a meaningful way.
Filed under: NFL