The Detroit Free Press reports that the Lions have joined the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Denver Broncos in turning down an opportunity to be covered by HBO’s Hard Knocks show.
On paper, the Lions made a lot of sense as a Hard Knocks target because they’re a young team on the rise. G.M. Martin Mayhew and coach Jim Schwartz aren’t proponents of an open-book approach when it comes to organizational matters, however, which made Detroit unlikely to accept.
“When you start getting into meeting rooms, when you start getting into the cafeteria,” Schwartz said last fall, "... into the locker room and things like that, it changes the vibe.”
If HBO doesn’t want to waste anymore time, it should probably look no further than the Falcons. Atlanta G.M. Thomas Dimitroff indicated this week that he’d be willing to put his team under the Hard Knocks microscope.