The second episode of this year’s Hard Knocks series opened by focusing on receiver Corey Coleman, his 1,000 pairs of shoes, and the trade that abruptly sent him to Buffalo. Far more significant than the scenes that made it, however, were those that didn’t.
Coleman enters the office of coach Hue Jackson, complains about not being a first-stringer, and eventually says, “If y’all don’t want me to play, why don’t y’all just trade me?”
And then, just like that, Coleman was gone.
There was no footage of the meeting at which Coleman was being told that he had gotten what he wanted. More importantly, the audience got to see none of the internal conversations regarding the effort to find a suitor for Coleman. While there surely was some sensitivity regarding the potential public identification of other teams that may have been interested, why not include footage of any meetings during which Browns officials discuss their efforts to get value in return for a 2016 first-round pick -- and their acceptance of the fact that they eventual got a mere seventh-round selection, in 2020?
Conspicuously absent from the first two episodes of the series have been owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam. What did they have to say when learning that the 15th overall pick in the draft only two years ago was being swapped for the football equivalent of a half-eaten ham sandwich?
Keep this in mind the next time you think of Hard Knocks as a reality show or a documentary. In the end, it’s an infomercial bought, paid for, and produced by the NFL, intended to show us only what they want us to see. While that makes last week’s decision to include the back-and-forth between Jackson and offensive coordinator Todd Haley even more stunning, it invites fair scrutiny regarding obvious content that for whatever reason ended up on the cutting-room floor.