It wasn’t as stirring as Rex Ryan’s training camp opening speech that started off the New York Jets season of Hard Knocks, but Houston Texans head coach Bill O’Brien’s pre-camp pep talk to his coaching staff got their strong premiere episode cooking quickly.
“When you fucking guys show up to practice tomorrow,” O’Brien bluntly told them in a meeting room. “They better be ready to fucking go.”
One of the best parts of this series is getting a look at how individuals at all levels of a football team interact with each other behind closed doors. It’s raw, emotional, heartfelt and a view into people’s personalties we rarely get to see. If you’ve ever seen O’Brien talk during a press conference watching him speak with this level of intensity is an unexpected, awesome experience.
The intricate balance between the seriousness and light-hearted side of these teams is what makes the show special.
More impressive catching performance on Hard Knocks:
The elephant from Vince Wilfork?
Adam “Pacman Jones” catching six punts?
I’m going with the elephant.
As always Hard Knocks gave us a peak into the personal side of a couple players and on this episode it was Wilfork and Kevin Johnson. We discovered Wilfork is the fat guy who talks smack the entire game when he plays pickup basketball, and Johnson, a first-round pick rookie, immediately gave his teammates locker room material. His sister is a cheerleader for the Baltimore Ravens — I’m so, so, so sorry Kevin.
With how the Texans roster is built the two highest profile personalities got showcased plenty in J.J. Watt and Arian Foster, but it wasn’t overwhelming. Watt puts an unreal amount of time into his craft whether it be working out with a 1,000-pound tire or doing reps by himself on dummy sleds after practice.
Foster gets trained by his brother in what looked like a decent sized group. His groin injury was discovered during this week of taping and it revealed how O’Brien handled dealing with his first controversy up close. Much like one of his mentors, Bill Belichick, it was onto the next one and no sympathy for the team, just for the person in Foster.
Despite the roster being at 90 players O’Brien was very much into relationship building and everyone being informed about the organization. This led to an awkward game of name trivia with the entire team present that ended like “Inside the NBA’s” bit where they have Charles Barkley guess which low-level player plays on which team.
O’Brien also made clear his taste in music: “Fucking love Rick Ross, man.” Everyone laughed like they should when a 45-year-old, bald, white guy says “Fucking love Rick Ross, man.”
The best two moments in the episode came from the Texans joint practice with the Washington Redskins in Richmond, Virginia. Obviously, the fight was must see viewing, but I think it needed a little bit more. I would have been interested in learning about what happened in the aftermath of the craziness. Redskins receiver Pierre Garcon calling someone on Houston’s defense a “fuck boy” twice almost made up for it though.
Redskins cornerback DeAngelo Hall did what was expected whenever a camera is in the vicinity — he made a complete fool of himself. Hall ran his mouth to Texans WR DeAndre Hopkins and then Hopkins broke him so bad Hall fell to the ground. Of course Hall claimed it as “slipping” if you read through some of the articles from when it happened.
I’ll be back next week with thoughts from episode two.
