{"id":9127,"date":"2020-02-20T02:12:04","date_gmt":"2020-02-20T02:12:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/?p=9127"},"modified":"2020-02-20T02:12:06","modified_gmt":"2020-02-20T02:12:06","slug":"hard-knocks-would-be-nuts-not-to-choose-the-pittsburgh-steelers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/nfl\/hard-knocks-would-be-nuts-not-to-choose-the-pittsburgh-steelers\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Hard Knocks\u2019 Would Be Nuts Not to Choose the Pittsburgh Steelers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

BY ADAM GREENE<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

This\nopportunity has presented itself before. The rules for being\n\u201cselected\u201d to be featured on HBO\u2019s Hard Knocks<\/em> are\nsimple; a team can\u2019t have a first-year head coach, they had to miss\nthe playoffs for the previous two seasons and they can\u2019t have\nappeared on Hard Knocks<\/em> in the last 10 years. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\ncall that last clause the \u201cBengals Amendment\u201d as it keeps Mike\nBrown from volunteering his garbage team to appear on the show every\nseason. In reality, all the HK rules were put into place after the\nsecond Bengals season no one on the planet wanted to see. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If\nthose rules had been in place in 2013, then the Pittsburgh Steelers\ncould have been compelled to be on a show that in which no good team\nevery wants to be featured. Hard Knocks<\/em> is a badge of dishonor\nin the NFL. It\u2019s a sign of organizational and coaching failure, of\nbad drafts, poor free agent spending and stupid team management. If\nyou\u2019re available for Hard Knocks<\/em>, you\u2019re not a good\nfootball franchise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s\nwhy so many NFL head coaches featured on Hard Knocks<\/em> since it\nreturned in 2007 are no longer NFL head coaches. In fact, only the\nHouston Texans\u2019 Bill O\u2019Brien from the 2015 season and last year\u2019s\nJon Gruden of the Oakland Raiders still have their jobs. Everybody\nelse is either an assistant, out of the league, or riding a desk as a\nTV analyst. In fact, three of the last four teams that were featured\non the show fired their head coach during or after that same season. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s\na murderer\u2019s row of bad football. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s\nwhy when the opportunity arises, through injuries, bad luck and\nplayoff tiebreakers to feature an actual good team on the show, it\nshould be pounced upon immediately. It\u2019s why Hard Knocks<\/em> can\nnot mess up its chance to put the Pittsburgh Steelers on the show\nthis season. It may not ever come again. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nSteelers have been a consistent playoff team since 1989, rarely\ntaking more than few years off before making their return. Mike\nTomlin is just the third head coach the team has hired since 1969.\nThe two guys that proceeded him, Chuck Noll and Bill Cowher, are both\nin the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Tomlin, for whatever faults he has\n(and there are few) is probably headed there too. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With\nthe new playoff rules proposed in the 2020\nNFL\/NFLPA Collective Bargaining Agreement<\/a>, Pittsburgh\nmight never miss the playoffs again. Under the new regs, they would\nhave been in this year and in 2018 too. This opportunity is basically\nthe Haley\u2019s Comet of Hard Knocks<\/em> seasons. It\u2019ll only come\naround once every 75 years or so. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of\ncourse, Hard Knocks<\/em> has blown one of these chances before. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not\nwith the Steelers, but with the New Orleans Saints. And they did it\ntwice. The Saints missed the playoffs in 2015 and 2016, the second\nand third years they did so. They were right on the cusp, going 7-9\nthree straight years and had a future Hall of Fame quarterback in\nDrew Brees and head coach in Sean Payton on the roster. There was\neven the added drama of it not being too far away from Payton\u2019s\nBountygate<\/a>\nseason-long suspension. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If\nHard Knocks<\/em> had picked the Saints, they would have no choice\nbut to comply. Instead, they picked the Texans in 2015 and the Los\nAngeles Rams in 2016. The Rams season was especially egregious as\nHard Knocks didn\u2019t even bother to focus on the team\u2019s star\nplayers like Aaron Donald, Todd Gurley and only barely tossed a\nglance at rookie QB Jared Goff. Instead, there wasn\u2019t a practice\nsquad or first-cut\nloser<\/a> they didn\u2019t point a camera at. In a season of\nlow points for the Rams, it was one of the lowest. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nteams up this year? The Detroit Lions, Jacksonville Jaguars, Arizona\nCardinals, Denver Broncos and, of course, the Steelers. I guarantee\nyou that if you\u2019d like to see any of those other teams on a Hard\nKnocks<\/em> in the future, you\u2019ll get your chance. Hell, in the NFC\nWest the Cardinals could .500 or better for the next decade and not\nmake the postseason. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Steelers? This is it. Don\u2019t be stupid again, NFL Films.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get the latest NFL football odds and information–follow BetOnline.ag on Twitter<\/a>!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BetOnline.ag on Instagram<\/a>–Follow for the latest odds, stats and information!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY ADAM GREENE This opportunity has presented itself before. The rules for being \u201cselected\u201d to be featured on HBO\u2019s Hard…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":9128,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[129],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nfl"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9127"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9127\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9129,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9127\/revisions\/9129"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}