From the opening speech, Hard Knocks featuring the Houston Texans pulled in my attention. While many people don’t respect the Texans, as pointed out by Head Coach Bill O’Brien, I believe Hard Knocks will allow people to get a new perspective of the Texans organization.
First thing first, O’Brien had a speech at the start of the episode to his coaching staff that should fire up the organization. He mentioned the lack of respect the Texans get and how much backlash his quarterbacks get, and wanted to make sure all his coaches knew that they are a laughing stock of the NFL, and want them to change the narrative.
Next we got to see the Texans newest addition, Vince Wilfork, leave his old team the Patriots after receiving his Super Bowl ring, to join the Texans. Clips of Arian Foster working out with his trainer, who happens to be his brother, were priceless. It’s always great to see one of the best running backs in the league work on their training regime.
“He knows my body,” said Foster about his brother training him.
We got a chance to see the rookies move in as they prepared for their first official training camp. In one session, O’Brien asked a rookie who was a player in the session and he couldn’t tell O’Brien. O’ Brien made sure that all his players knew that they are a team and everyone should know everyone’s names. Granted, I knew the player was Akeem Dent, who played 4 years with the Atlanta Falcons, but the rookie didn’t.
The music on the episode was pretty dope. All the training scenes and practices were fueled by a tough soundtrack. The cinematography, the edits and the flow of the scenes were all great. Whether or not the storyline gets more interesting, the quality of the show seems to be awesome.
The coaches did not mind cursing in front of the camera and the players were quick to add funny quotable for entertainment value.
J.J. Watt is clearly the most notable Texan, however I believe that we will get to know a lot more of the Texans before the show ends. Watt is still an unbelievable athlete and seems very humble off the field.
Watching a rookie tear his ACL was sad, however it seems like every season of Hard Knocks takes us inside a torn ACL. We even got to cover the Arian Foster groin injury in the first episode. O’Brien gave a very heated speech to the whole team about injuries and moving on from the injury until Foster got back.
On the players days off, Wilfork was seen playing basketball and it probably would surprise you how smooth he was moving. Back at practice we got to take a look at WR DeAndre Hopkins, as he prepares to be the Texans No. 1 receiving option. Hopkins was a beast in joint practice vs. the Redskins and torched all their DBs.
One thing the show didn’t go into was the quarterback competition. I can only hope to see more about that on the next few episodes. What they did show however was the team forgetting the jerseys for the quarterbacks at joint practice against the Redskins. The funniest part about it was they ended up wearing Redskin jerseys.
The episode ended with the famous scuffle that broke out during the televised Redskins vs Texans joint practice. The fight was one of the more interesting portions of the episode.
Overall, the first episode of Hard Knocks featuring the Texans was pretty dope. It was good enough to keep the fans watching.
I would give this episode a 9 out of 10, and I cannot wait until next Tuesday at 10.