As Hard Knocks openings go, Aaron Rodgers delivered an all-time classic for HBO’s 20th season of scenes from an NFL training camp. The New York Jets quarterback struts on to the field and mutters: “Gonna give you some good shit today.” It is trademark Rodgers: breezy, off-hand and ultra-confident. It is at this precise moment that Jets fans collectively respond: “We got ourselves a quarterback.” If they were smiling after the montage when Rodgers says their single Lombardi is looking lonely in the team’s trophy cabinet, one can only imagine their ecstatic expression after this brash assurance.
Well, that is unless they have never seen this hyperbolic roadshow before. This set piece along with every (and there are a lot) montage of Rodgers throwing perfect spiral after perfect spiral provides the archetypal opening gambit of Hard Knocks. The attempt to dupe us into mass Jets fever: that they are the best team in the league, never mind the numerous roadblocks on the way to February football. Of course Rodgers looks great throwing the ball because he is Aaron Rodgers, a Super Bowl winner and four-time NFL MVP.
