No Hardknocks, No Worries

Well, I guess I’m going to have to scratch that Chargers Hardknocks appearance off my bucket list.

Cable TV channel HBO decided that the most intriguing team to feature on this year’s NFL Training Camp show “Hardknocks” is the Cleveland Browns.

The series takes a look into personal and professional lives of NFL players, coaches and staff, including their family life, position battles, and even a rookie hazing. The show also introduces the teams’ new rookie players and how the transition into the NFL lifestyle is not always as easy as it seems. As the series nears the start of the regular season, the show documents the process of trimming down the roster to 53 players, and puts an emphasis on the conversations between the front office and the players that get released.

The Chargers were one of 6 teams that were ‘eligible’ to be selected to do Hardknocks.

It’s all must-see TV. And I will never get that inside look into the Chargers Training Camp.

Since the shows inception in 2001, I have prayed that my beloved Chargers would be the featured team. That prayer will never be answered now.

It’s too bad.

Because there will be no inside look into Joey Bosa explaining hand techniques to rookie Uchenna Nwosu. I wanted to know what Joey thinks of the second round pick.

Heck, I wanted to see what Bosa does off the field. I imagine Joey feels at home with the L.A beaches a quick drive away. And I hear he has a passion for cooking.

I love food too. But scratch that.

HBO thinks it will be more interesting to see if they can catch Browns rookie Quarterback Baker Mayfield saying something disparaging towards presumptive starting Quarterback Tyrod Taylor. I like me some Mayfield, and I was in the group that wouldn’t have minded if the Chargers drafted him if he was there at 17. But I’m a team guy, so I would have rather watched training camp of my team.

Which means I will never be able to see the kind of relationship Chargers coach Anthony Lynn has with Running Back Melvin Gordon. I would have been really interested in this. Lynn used to be a running back too. So I hoped that I’d get the chance to see if Lynn really believes in him as much as he says he does.

Instead, we’ll get to hear the fast talking Browns Head Coach Hue Jackson go on and on and on about how his team has a real shot at surprising people this year, all the while his seat begins to get warm as he piles on guarantees about no QB controversy, how there’s enough balls for Josh Gordon and Jarvis Landry.

And I’m really not looking forward to watching Hue in a speedo jumping into a lake. But I suspect we’ll see something like that at some point.

This Hardknocks has boring written all over it.

What’s not boring is the Chargers secondary.

You know, the bestest, most-freshest and soon to be most respected secondary in the NFL.

So many angles to cover the Secondary of Shock that somebody needs to start following them around and do their own mini-series. I’m so interested to see the rookie alpha dog Derwin James interact with fellow Alpha’s Casey Hayward and Jason Verrett, and Trevor Williams and Desmond King and Jaleel Addae and… see who is the real Alpha of the Alpha’s.

Yeah, that would have been cool.

But nope. We’re going to get a big dose of how there is a running back competition between newly acquired running backs Carlos Hyde, rookie Nick Chubb and incumbent Duke Johnson.

Blah Blah Blah.

I don’t even think a LeBron appearance could save this season. (Maybe it could! Pshhh, don’t tell HBO.)

But maybe the most dagumit thing I am going to forever wish I could have witnessed, was a little bit of a look into the life of Chargers Quarterback and Philip Rivers.

Being a father of 7 kids myself, I will never get the chance to see if I have any fathering similarities to the future Hall-of-Famer. Does he have as much trouble deciding what’s for dinner as I do? Is laundry day every day too? How does he still have time to have a romantic dinner with his wife?

I will never get that chance to see any of this.

Because the Chargers are going to make the playoffs this year. And then they will win the Super Bowl this year too! And it will be playoffs year after year for the rest of my life.

Thus eliminating themselves from Hardknock eligibility.

But, it’s the price I guess I have to pay for crossing off another thing off my bucket list: Saying the Chargers are Super Bowl Champions.

I’d rather live with that.