The season finale of Hard Knocks has aired, and it is the last domino to fall before the start of the regular season.

The show, which has run 19 seasons finished its final episode featuring the New York Jets for the second time in the show’s run and we likely won’t see the Jets for at least another decade.

Going into the season, the talk was that the Jets wanted no part of being on the show and reportedly fought tooth and nail not to be featured this year. The NFL, HBO and NFL Films ultimately won the battle and forced the Jets to take part. But while the focus was on the show changing the Jets going into the 2023 season, the end result is the opposite with the Jets changing the show going forward.

The Jets refused a few of the mainstay elements of the HBO docuseries before agreeing to participate in the show. Most notably, Robert Saleh and GM Joe Douglas refused to allow the camera to be rolling when a player was cut from the team.

This is one of the most dramatic and interesting moments of every season. To watch a player who worked his whole life to make an NFL team learn that the road to a 53-man roster just got a lot harder. Jets brass thought it was inappropriate to show players in that moment of loss and vulnerability, and maybe they are right. But it still very much hurt the product HBO put on the air.

I wonder if this will now become the standard as more teams refuse to allow cameras to film players at their most vulnerable.

With very little invested in fringe roster players throughout the season, the show instead focused on the stars, mostly Aaron Rodgers. The producers attempted to shoehorn Tanziel Smart and receivers Jason Brownlee and Xavier Gibson at the end, but it ultimately felt forced.

Episodes became a mix of One Jets Drive and preseason highlights as opposed to what the show’s ultimate mission is: to show what life is like for football players during the roughest few weeks of the year.

Ultimately, I enjoyed this season of Hard Knocks but that is because I care about the New York Jets. I can’t imagine someone who is a fan of another team with no connection to the Jets would get nearly as much out of the episodes as someone who is invested in the Jets.

The highlight of the season for me has been watching Aaron Rodgers show off his football IQ, leadership and attention to detail all while dispelling the perception that he is a bad teammate.

Speaking on the “God Bless Football” podcast, NBC analyst Chris Simms says “I think he is generally more like that than people ever wanted to give him credit for. I genuinely believe he is happy as hell. He’s all around the locker room talking to people and coaching people.”

Rodgers was the unquestioned star of the show, and I’m not even sure he needed to be. Most of the interview stuff with him seemed forced and quirky, while his dialogues with other players and coaches mic’d up in practice were gold.

The final episode didn’t even need to air. With no cut downs and no game to run highlights for 20 minutes, they shoved Broadway and UFO’s down our throats in an effort to fill the time.

Ultimately, this season fell flat because of the restriction put on the show runners by the team. They ignored a lot of story lines including Mekhi Becton, Corey Davis’ sudden retirement and apart from one small highlight reel, Breece Hall’s comeback.

While I have an interest in a behind the scenes look at the Jets, if another team follows this same blueprint next season, I doubt I will make it past episode two.

There’s a lot of interesting things from the Jets’ fourth episode of Hard Knocks

The Rodgers trash talk was awesome

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