"Hard Knocks" Show Runners Offer Behind-the-Scenes Look into Giants' Appearance on Series

Showrunners Paul Camarata and Emily Cameron peel back the curtain on the production behind the popular HBO series.

New York Giants / courtesy of Giatns.com

How do you take an NFL franchise that has 100 days to put together its 100th roster and tell that story in five 40-minute episodes?

That was just one of the challenges HBO's Hard Knocks: Offseason with the New York Giants show runners Paul Camarata and Emily Cameron and their respective staffs faced in putting together the cable giant’s new iteration of its long-running Hard Knocks series.

“I'll be honest, that was one of the things I feel like I got from most of the Giants in the midst of filming. They're like, ‘How are you going to turn this all down and edit it down?’ Cameron told the Locked On Giants podcast.  

Unlike training camp or the in-season, no two teams’ offseasons are the same. While all 32 teams are driven by a set series of events on the NFL calendar, like free agency, the college All-Star games, the combine, the draft, and minicamps, no two teams approach those events the same way. 

According to Cameron and Camarata, the initial challenge was to get a feel for how the Giants planned to approach the various events on the offseason calendar. 

“From there, it was, here's how we wanna cover the combine, here's how we wanna cover the draft, here’s what we're thinking for the Senior Bowl, and that type of thing,” Cameron said.

The process was made easier thanks to a team of production assistants who kept the footage organized and cataloged, making picking out what stories they wanted to tell much easier. 

“That was like a monumental undertaking, and they certainly helped us whittle out what seemed to be the big stories,” said Cameron.

The other big takeaway some had about the Giants demanding “final editing rights” as part of the deal to appear in the series. Camarata explained that, as they do with all the teams that appear on Hard Knocks, they provided the Giants with approval of the footage chosen to tell the story.  

“It's always been about competitive balance and protecting the integrity of a team–not disclosing almost inadvertently to our not understanding of it,” Camarata said. 

In other words, the objective wasn’t to paint the team or any one individual in a specific light. Rather, it was to protect the team from having anything it felt might offer their opponents a competitive edge disclosed on the air.  

“It's always critical when we do these shows–and the Giants were no different–where we establish that trust is that we're gonna cut the show, we're gonna tell the story, but you're gonna have a chance to look at it and approve the content,” Camarata said.

With three episodes still to go, Camarata promised viewers would see additional information about some of the storylines introduced in the first two episodes. Although he didn’t go into specifics, those will likely include free agency decisions like the fallout from the Saquon Barkley talks and possibly even some talks surrounding safety Xavier McKinney.

There will also be a peek at some of the big name acquisitions the Giants made during free agency shown before the series turns to the draft.  

“We know who they drafted in the first round, but I think we’ll see the why,” Camarata teased. 

Hard Knocks: Offseason with the New York Giants airs every Tuesday during July at 9 p.m. ET on HBO/MAX.  

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