Dolphins coach Joe Philbin doesn’t think having his team profiled on Hard Knocks this year will be a training camp distraction. Then again, Philbin doesn’t know exactly what to expect from Hard Knocks, because he’s never even seen it.
Philbin told Mike Florio, filling in as the host this week on the Dan Patrick Show, that the presence of NFL Films cameras for the upcoming HBO reality show hasn’t been a problem, and he’s not worried about giving anything away because the show focuses more on personalities than on Xs and Os.
“Up to this point, four or five days into training camp, it’s gone pretty smoothly,” Philbin said. “They’re not interested in producing a show where they want to know what we’re doing against an empty formation and when the back motions out of the backfield and creates a three by one. That’s my understanding, the people who watch Hard Knocks aren’t interested in that.”
Philbin said the impact of Hard Knocks has been “literally none” so far in training camp, and he said he doesn’t know much about the show because he’s too busy coaching football at this time of year to be watching TV.
“I’ve never seen one of them yet,” Philbin said. “I told the team this spring, maybe 20 years from now we’ll have a reunion and it’ll be fun to sit there and watch Hard Knocks together. But right now we’ve got work to do and that’s what we’re doing.”
For the rest of us, Hard Knocks should be an entertaining inside look at Philbin’s team, starting next Tuesday.