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When it comes to TV, the NFL season has already started. And I don’t just mean the slew of exhibition games that are available almost non-stop on NFL Network, including several live games that will cluster into a seemingly regular-season confluence of 11 games spread out from early afternoon to late night tomorrow.
Fantasy football geeks got a liberal dose of fresh content and star power with extended live episodes of the likes of FANTASY FOOTBALL NOW in prime time and appearances by gurus like Matthew Berry on THE TONIGHT SHOW and Mina Kimes on LATE NIGHT in a week where neither Colbert nor Kimmel were around to obsess over whatever might be going on in the diseased mind of the Washington Re–er, Commanders’ self-designated top booster. And if you’re a true lover of everything football, no less than three different platforms (look, at this point, calling them networks seems almost archaic) are dedicating prime real estate to documentaries on three different teams.
As has been the case for multiple decades of Augusts, HBO, Max or otherwise, has provided us with the exceptional up-close and personal lens inside an NFL training camp that HARD KNOCKS devotes to the six Tuesday nights leading up to the season opener. This year’s version is especially meaningful to me as it features the Buffalo Bills, one of only five teams that still train the way most teams used to: on a small college campus in an otherwise sleepy area. And considering the Bills’ choice is a former soccer arch-rival of my alma mater, Pittsford’s St. John Fisher University, it brings back many fond memories of damp fall afternoons slogging it out on the usually muddy pitch that for these purposes serves as the playing field for Josh Allen and others aspiring to FINALLY bring a title to a franchise now on year 60 without one and nary a one in their NFL existence.
Unsurprisingly, it’s excellent. This week’s second installment touched on the budding drama involving star running back James Cook, who was in the midst of what management called a “hold-in”–being physically at camp and participating in classroom meetings yet not setting foot on the field. At the time of airing, it teased what might have been the kind of story arc that dominated the year they covered a Jets’ training camp at SUNY Cortland where Darrelle Revis’ contract standoff was finally settled at a Route 17 diner that I often used as a rest stop enroute to that college. Alas, mere hours later Cook and the Bills reached a contract extension agreement, so that storyline is gone. Perhaps knowing that was imminent, the episode instead focused on the more human “local boy makes good”story of linebacker Joe Andresseen, someone who intimately knows both the joys of an upstate New York summer and the sorrows of their often interminable winters. Naturally, he’s now my favorite Bill.
But last night they got some company in the form of their AFC arch-rival Kansas City Chiefs, the subject of Skydance’s latest NFL-related production THE KINGDOM. ESPN devoted two hours of prime time tonight to the first two episodes and its ESPN+ homepage to the entire six-episode series. A TO Z SPORTS’ Charles Goldman pretty much echoed my sentiments:
The beauty of this documentary is that it isn’t just a six-episode highlight reel of the Chiefs’ improbable run at greatness; it’s a deeper look into the complexities that got them to this point. At its core, it’s very much about how failure fuels success. How the calluses that football creates help build you up, while also tearing you down.
It includes a real how-it-was-made on the Chiefs’ history and their place in the league, coupled with their prolonged drought of playoff success, which helped champion this era of Kansas City football. It seamlessly blends the past with the present, and at times will hit long-time fans with a dose of nostalgia enough to give you goosebumps. But it truly has something for everyone, including a nod to the haters at varying levels, from “Chiefs fatigue” to “Chiefs Derangement Syndrome.”
Directed by Kristen Lappas and produced by Words + Pictures in association with Skydance Sports, NFL Films, 2PM Productions, and Foolish Club Studios, the docuseries follows the Kansas City Chiefs’ 2024 NFL season. They were granted unprecedented access, win or lose, as the team sought to make history by becoming the first-ever team to win three consecutive Super Bowl titles. We all know how that story ended, but this docuseries provides a behind-the-scenes glimpse with many never-before-seen moments and untold stories.
And, oh yeah, that tight end with the Showgirl girlfriend is liberally featured as well. And don’t think since Skydance’s newest toy will be the network (and streaming) home of their regular season games there isn’t an extra bit of motivation to get as many eyeballs to their new media rival as possible.
Excellent as that is, all indications are we’re about to blown away far more by Netflix’s look back at the Dallas Cowboys when they established their identity and actually won some post-season games in the process. And what this series had unprecedented access to is the sport’s de facto P.T. Barnum and living definition of what has made it the most successful franchise in the most successful sport. USA TODAY’ Scooby Axson gave us his advance look earlier this week:
Being relevant in the sports world in this day and age, with the saturation of social media, talk radio, and mindless, numbing, bloviating morning shows, is a golden ticket that you can’t buy. Unless your team is the Cowboys, who haven’t sniffed a Super Bowl appearance in three decades but are talked about ad nauseum as if their exploits on the field recently warrant a minute of anyone’s time. There is one person largely responsible for that: Jerral Wayne Jones Sr., the 82-year-old Hall of Fame owner and general manager of the five-time Super Bowl champions. Netflix has hopped on the Jerry’s World bandwagon with a fascinating sports series, titled “America’s Team: The Gambler and His Cowboys,” premiering Aug. 19 on the streaming service, because let’s be real, there were cameras nearby and a chance for people to talk and dissect the film before the NFL starts its 106th season next month.
The eight-part series doesn’t skip any of the major contributors of the 1990s Cowboys, who would have set social media on fire if it existed back then. The dozens of athletes and journalists featured provide context, praise, and biting criticism about Jones and do so with incredible insight, and the series also includes appearances from former President of the United States George W. Bush, Nike co-founder Phil Knight, and former Fox Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch.
And in true Jones style of capitalizing on every possible chance to be in the news, what we learn about Jones in one of the episodes was picked up this week as breaking news that even made the pages of THE IDAHO STATESMAN courtesy of Lawrence Dow:
Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones revealed he suffered from stage 4 melanoma for over a decade but survived, according to the Dallas Morning News.
Jones said his life was saved by an experimental drug treatment called PD-1 therapy, which, according to the American Cancer Society, keeps T cells from attacking normal cells.
“PD-1 is a checkpoint protein on immune cells called T cells. It acts as a ‘off switch’ to helps keep the T cells from attacking normal cells. PD-1 does this by attaching to PD-L1, a protein found on some normal and cancer cells. When PD-1 binds to PD-L1, it tells the T cell not to attack. Some cancer cells have large amounts of PD-L1, which helps them avoid being attacked by the immune system.” Jones received treatment from the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston after being diagnosed in 2010 and went through four surgeries over the next decade, two on his lungs and two on his lymph nodes.
Jones said he is now tumor-free. After news of his cancer fight was revealed, Jones offered more details to the media Wednesday afternoon from training camp in Oxnard, California. “You don’t like to think about your mortality,” he said. “I was so fortunate to have some great people that sent me in the right direction.
Anything that can make Jerry Jones a sympathetic character in this day age–to anyone perhaps except Micah Parsons’ agent–is definitely worth my time.
Here’s to football. Even in documentary form.
Courage…