1st episode of AFC North 'Hard Knocks' was heavy on good football, light on conflict and intrigue

The first episode of HBO’s “Hard Knocks: In Season With the AFC North” gave me exactly what I expected.

It was a typical NFL Films all-access, behind-the-curtain look at the Pittsburgh Steelers and their three AFC North foes in Cleveland, Baltimore and Cincinnati.

It’s shot brilliantly. It’s well-directed and well-produced. The pace moves quickly between the four cities. The clips in the coaches’ rooms are excellent. The in-game video is outstanding.

I’m just wondering if all that access is really going to get us all that much “behind the curtain.”

And I’m wondering if “Hard Knocks” is ever going to get … you know … hard. Because Episode 1 was soft and sanitized.

I don’t mean from a physicality standpoint. The low-angle game footage of Cameron Heyward shoving the Bengals’ offensive line around is great, as were some of the mid-game shots of Baltimore’s Derrick Henry getting popped against the Philadelphia Eagles.

But where’s the conflict? Where’s the edge? Where’s the intrigue?

I mean, Browns offensive line coach Roy Istvan can only drop so many F-bombs before you need a little meat on the bone.

From a football standpoint, the editing crew does a superb job of setting up AFC North animosity. They sell the history of hate between all four teams really well with an early montage of old Steelers versus Browns versus Ravens versus Bengals highlights going back to when Terry Bradshaw got slammed on his head in Cleveland, through Joey Porter’s pregame fight with William Green and Sam Wyche getting on the stadium mic and yelling, “You don’t live in Cleveland, you live in Cincinnati,” and so on.

These 4 teams have history ????
#HardKnocks In Season with the AFC North premieres Tonight 9pm ET on @streamonmax pic.twitter.com/Uknv88AyFp

— NFL Films (@NFLFilms) December 3, 2024

But a lot of the anticipation for the Steelers-Bengals rivalry is illustrated by way of Tomlin and his assistant coaches hyping up how good Joe Burrow and Ja’Marr Chase are in the film rooms — or by Bengals coach Zac Taylor pumping up his team by telling them how well Russell Wilson runs the Steelers offense and how much they need to attack the Steelers defense.

There’s one mid-week clip where Steelers coaches talk about how much Minkah Fitzpatrick doesn’t like Chase. Then, the two of them seem to have a light-hearted exchange on the field about when Fitzpatrick is ever going to hit him.

If there is really old-school JuJu versus Burfict animus there, it’s not coming across.

Honestly, it’s a lot of the rah-rah, “Yeah! Football” propaganda video that NFL Films has perfected for six decades. No one takes corporate promotional commercials and turns them into hour-long masterclasses in film like those guys.

They are incredible at their craft. Seriously. Nobody in any sport — in any marketing business, period — is better at what they do than them. I don’t even know who is in second place.

It’s good in this edition of “Hard Knocks” too. It’s just that if you’re looking for anything along the lines of an inside peek at some drama John Q. Public never gets to see, it’s not there.

For instance, “Hard Knocks” starts by coming out of the Steelers-Browns game that Cleveland won on Nov. 21. It leads into the Steelers-Bengals game in Cincinnati last week.

There’s no reference to George Pickens getting into a fight at the end of the Cleveland game or the decision to have Justin Fields throw on that fateful third-down late in the fourth quarter. It’s just a bunch of oohing-and-awing over how good Myles Garrett was.

Pfft! I can get that on “SportsCenter.”

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During game highlights and sideline interaction in Cincy, you see nothing about Pickens getting those unsportsmanlike conduct penalties or Joey Porter Jr. getting flagged six times. We just got an embrace from Tomlin for Pickens after he got pulled down by his helmet during the opening drive pick-6.

We saw that live on CBS. Big deal.

The editors segue out of Steelers-Bengals and on to Baltimore-Philadelphia with a dejected Burrow walking off the field and the dulcet tones of Bengals play-by-play man Dan Hoard acknowledging that this was the fourth time this season that the Bengals offense had scored 33-plus points in a loss.

If you expected some good, old-fashioned locker room finger-pointing between offense and defense that you didn’t see in the mainstream media, don’t hold your breath. There’s nothing like that either.

The closest you get to something like that is how the crew focuses on the sudden demise of Ravens kicker Justin Tucker. But even that is surface-level stuff.

Now, if you wanted to know that Burrow is planning to buy a Batmobile or that Connor Heyward scooped too many mashed potatoes at Cam’s house on Thanksgiving, then “Hard Knocks” has you covered.

Nothing about Najee Harris pounding too much of that banana dessert at Pat Freiermuth’s house, though. Maybe that’s in Episode 2.

If so, I’m guessing Najee versus his own digestive system would be the closest thing to conflict that you are going to get for six weeks of this show, which, unfortunately, appears to be yet another heavily edited, diluted and scrubbed version of the real-life snapshot at football that “Hard Knocks” used to be when it was first released 23 years ago.

“Hard Knocks: In Season With the AFC North” looks like it is going to be a well-made, expertly produced, fun, easy watch on a weekly basis.

I just don’t know if “fun and easy” is what people expect.