The Hard Knocks: Training Camp with the Buffalo Bills finale brings to an end a season that almost feels too short. Across five episodes, the HBO and NFL Films series has given football fans a glimpse at what makes the defending AFC East champions so memorable. But with the NFL regular season beginning on Thursday, it’s time for this chapter of Hard Knocks to come to a close.

In the second part of our interview with Hard Knocks producer Pat Harris (part one is available here), we discuss what will make this season a success. Plus, learn how Pat and his team work around the challenge of telling stories that are still unfolding in front of them. What’s the hardest part of Hard Knocks?

Brittany Frederick: What’s your standard of success for Hard Knocks: Training Camp with the Buffalo Bills? Not just in terms of the lengthy history of the show, but your own personal connection to the area?

Pat Harris: This one’s definitely going to be different, because I’m going to have a lot of personal opinions and people reaching out to me. So part of me is going to want to make sure that I’m appeasing to family and friends that are Bills fans, and make sure that they they feel like they saw an incredible show, an incredible season.

But then also a lot of it internally within our building and NFL Films. I think we’ve been doing [Hard Knocks] for so long that you just kind of know when a season is elevated or special. It’s so hard to compare with ratings—even for us with the Sports Emmys. It’s really kind of a crapshoot. The years that have won it have felt like, hey, we knew this was really good, but maybe not as good as other years. In the years we say, man, we knocked it out of the park, nothing happens. So I’ve kind of learned to accept that I can’t really gauge it off of that.

And numbers, it’s always great, and we do great numbers. But we know, like you said, those have a lot of variables to them. So I think it’s kind of a two-pronged approach with not only family and friends, but within our building, just how it’s received.

The challenge with sports docuseries is that you’re working with stories that are happening now. How do you navigate that balance between telling the best story, and only having so many minutes, and also so many days in which to turn an episode around?

Stuff changes non stop. We’ve had many instances where a storyline that might be the top of the media [cycle] on Wednesday, where the show’s already aired, and then the next Wednesday happens, and all of a sudden we say oh, man, this is going to have to be in the show. And then by the time you hit Sunday and Monday of the following week, you’re like that’s that’s really not relevant anymore. We have to take the approach of just constantly being ready to evolve.

And same thing with players—all of a sudden, the player you think that you’re going to introduce in this episode, he might get sick, or he might get hurt, or something happens where you can’t just say well, we wanted to do this on Monday or Tuesday, and we’ve got to stick to it. You just really have to be ready to adapt. And I think the people back at NFL Films, they probably have a as hard a job as any, constantly having to react to the things that we tell them that are happening out there.

Hard Knocks, whether it’s in training camp or in season, has been going on so long that it’s now a staple of the NFL. There’s a whole new season coming up almost as soon as this one ends with the NFC East. Is there anything you wished football fans knew about the show that they don’t?

The hardest part is the amount of footage that is filmed. You have to not only be seeing it in real time, but then we have to send it all back. It has to be logged. It has to then be put in [front of] the eyes of a producer to start making sense of it. There’s so much, in a good way. That’s what makes it the best show, that you’re really sifting through, and you’re only using the best.

But also that makes it incredibly challenging, where we can’t just say hey, you heard this. Why don’t you just put it in there? There’s five to six different sets of ears each day trying to listen to stuff. So the sheer amount, and adapting to different story lines, that’s sometimes a challenge—where you were like hey, we were set and ready to roll on this story, and one thing changed on Sunday night, and all of a sudden, we had to pivot off of it. It’s a constant, constant grind.

Is there anything that you’re particularly hoping NFL fans will take away from Hard Knocks: Training Camp with the Buffalo Bills?

Hopefully by the end of this series, we can peer in to see a little bit more of [Bills head coach] Sean McDermott and [Bills general manager] Brandon Beane. Being around them, and the cohesion and the chemistry they have with one another, it’s pretty incredible. It’s no coincidence that the Bills have been so successful—and it starts with them. It starts with ownership. Hopefully we can peer behind the curtain a little bit to see them more as people, because I think they are two incredible football minds, but human beings as well.

What is it like to spotlight Sean and Brandon, both in the sense of who they are as individuals but also getting to show viewers more of the coaches and personnel who they may not know very well?

I think that was a cool experience, to start to develop personal relationships with them and get to know them. It’s not only the on-camera interview stuff, but getting to know them when you were just hanging out at a walkthrough and just getting to know them as people, letting them get to know me, so hopefully they feel more comfortable with me and my crew that’s here. It’s been it’s everything I could hope for.

And I think coaches in general, they’re always very fascinating to be around. The amount of work and attention to detail that coaches have is something that never ceases to amaze me. You see them run off the practice field, grab food, go sit in an hour and 45 minute staff meeting to then ultimately go sit down and do a meeting with their players and have review for the entire practice—every single rep that happened… Just their work ethic, it’s incredible.

You spoke previously about your personal history growing up in the area. So what will you take away from this season of Hard Knocks on an individual level?

I think just getting to see some of those early practices. I grew up coming to St. John Fisher [University] and watching Bills training camp. Just getting to sit down and see, from start to finish, the Bills on those fields practicing. It was my son’s birthday recently; he turned four, and he got to show up to practice. Getting him to just run on the field and spend some moments with him was definitely a special one that I’ll cherish for a long time.

Hard Knocks: Training Camp with the Buffalo Bills concludes tonight at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT on HBO, with episodes streaming on HBO Max. Photo Credit: Courtesy of HBO Max.

Article content is (c)2020-2025 Brittany Frederick and may not be excerpted or reproduced without express written permission by the author. Follow me on Twitter at @BFTVTwtr and on Instagram at @BFTVGram. For story pitches, contact me at tvbrittanyf@yahoo.com.