Pittsburgh Steelers All-Pro defensive tackle Cam Heyward isn’t looking forward to being on the in-season AFC North Hard Knocks series. It’s something that he actually hates.
“I hated it, I don’t wanna be on this,” Cam Heyward said on his Not Just Football podcast. “The locker room is the locker room, and I just don’t want that getting messed up. There’s so many inside jokes. There’s so many people, like, you would assume everybody’s a jerk if you heard everything. But it comes from a loving place, and it comes from a caring place. We all wanna be better and we joke a lot. We poke and prod at each other, but it doesn’t come off that way always. And so that’s the only thing I really worry about.”
The Hard Knocks series will start on December 3, just in time for the Steelers stretch of late-season games against AFC North opponents. It’s the first time ever that HBO is highlighting an entire division. It’s also the first time that the Steelers will appear on the series.
Steelers long snapper Christian Kuntz also dreads being on Hard Knocks.
“I agree that people could get misinterpreted or other people could be misguided on how they feel about somebody based on what they hear on TV,” Kuntz told Heyward. “Where it could be just a joke, where it a hundred percent is just a joke or an inside joke, it’s just, a locker room’s like a safe place. That facility is like a safe place and you’re gonna have cameras everywhere. It’s in the middle of like Week 8, heat of the battle with division games and stuff.”
It’s understandable that Heyward and Kuntz are not fond of Hard Knocks. While it’s an interesting perspective for viewers, some of the information disclosed is too personal. For example, like when players get cut.
HBO revealed general manager Joe Schoen’s phone call with Saquon Barkley during the New York Giants Hard Knocks series. Stuff like that is frowned upon by players, and I can see where they’re coming from. Some info should be kept in-house.
It will be interesting to see how the Steelers handle Hard Knocks. As mentioned, it’s uncharted waters for the franchise.
Mark Kaboly of The Athletic thinks the Steelers will try to keep two players out of the spotlight on Hard Knocks — Patrick Queen and Najee Harris.
“It kind of came out of nowhere because the Steelers don’t like to open their doors and let outsiders see how the sausage is made. But when you can have four teams featured over six weeks, it doesn’t seem like that much of an ask for any of the organizations,” Kaboly wrote in The Athletic’s ‘Whiparound’. “I wouldn’t expect much to come out of it for Pittsburgh. Mike Tomlin, T.J. Watt, Heyward, Minkah Fitzpatrick and Russell Wilson are polished PR machines. I would imagine the Steelers will keep Patrick Queen and Najee Harris away from the cameras. But even if they don’t, there is an erase button available in the editing process.”
Before the 2024 season, the NFL allowed teams that had a playoff appearance over the last two seasons to refuse to participate in Hard Knocks, which is a major reason the Steelers have never done so. Those rules were amended this spring so that the league can force each team to participate once every eight seasons. The rules were changed after some contentious battles over the last few years, with few teams wanting to volunteer to take part in the show.