Oakland Raiders: 5 Major storylines following mandatory minicamp
How Will HBO’s Hard Knocks Affect Preparation?
Now for the popular talking point that doesn’t seem so important to the Raiders right now—HBO’s Hard Knocks. Camera crews will follow players and coaches around during the summer, starting Aug. 6, for five episodes of the next installment.
Usually, coaches prefer not to appear on the show because the film crews may expose issues that teams want to keep behind closed doors. Secondly, it’s unpleasant to publicly cut a player from the roster.
Guenther has been on Hard Knocks three times and pointed out a positive, to the media, in letting the cameras roll.
"The positive thing [is], you find out a lot about your team and the coaches on the staff, that hey, when the cameras are on are you going to be a different guy or different player or if you’re not?…After the third day, you really don’t realize, you’re so used to having them around that you just go about your business. I don’t really pay attention to where the cameras are."
The Raiders have several big personalities in the building, including Gruden himself, but Guenther just wants his guys to go work. Rookie safety Johnathan Abram echoed that sentiment, projecting a lunch-pale mentality toward training camp with or without the cameras. He appeared on the State of the Nation podcast with Jimmy Durkin and Tafur.
"For me, I’m not worried about exposure, Hard Knocks [or] any of that. I look forward to going out here every single day for training camp, working together as a team, stacking building blocks on top of building blocks like coach Gruden talks about every day and just getting better every day. The cameras are just going to be there…I tell guys, got to be who you are, be yourself every single day…And when you do that, the cameras seem obsolete."
Next. Oakland Raiders: 3 Potential breakout Hard Knocks stars. dark
Of course, we’ll see characters put on for the cameras in some moments, but the Raiders have a goal to bounce back from an abysmal 4-12 season. The process of improvement will pick up at training camp in Napa. Viewers will have a look at how the players and coaches plan to put together an impressive 2019 campaign.