The Bengals come off their bye week Monday to find NFL Films at the Paycor Stadium door with the hardest knock of all.
The eyes and ears of the league have returned to a set they find as comfortable as summer stock to begin filming a Hard Knocks HBO documentary that spans the last hard six weeks of the AFC North winter.
"I lead all operations in the field, but I wanted to headquarter myself here," says Steve Trout, the senior director of the project who cut his teeth on the 2009 series at Bengals training camp and still talks to the stars of that show such as Chad Johnson and Marvin Lewis.
"I've got six directors out there, but I feel comfortable here. I know the stadium well, I know the facility well."
So will everybody else soon enough. The first show airs a week from Tuesday, on Dec. 3, a little more than 48 hours after the Bengals play the Steelers Sunday (1 p.m.-Cincinnati's Local 12) at Paycor that is part of NFL Films' first attempt at chronicling all four teams in a division during a season.
Any resemblance to a training camp story is purely coincidental.
"The stakes," says Trout of the biggest difference between the August show and this one. "I tell teams, 'Look, by the third day you'll forget we're here.' They chuckle and then they do. It's getting them to just trust us and look past us. We're not here to sensationalize anything. We want to show how smart it takes to be in that proverbial room. But these are real games and that's the big difference with August."
So the show's footprint in the building is smaller than at training camp. Thanks to that and the way technology has shrunk 2009 into 2024, only one truck was needed to bring in the equipment. Trout's army is lean and light while taking up half of Paycor's TV production office.
He has two or three camera crews manned by one or two people culled from a group of ten. There are 16 robotic cameras, smaller and quieter than 15 years ago. There are also about 50 microphones nestled in various offices and player spaces.
They aren't surveillance cameras, Trout emphasizes. Nothing is hidden. They've been approved by the club. And, the robotics won't be used in public areas, such as the weight room, cafeteria and locker room.
"That allows us to really be that fly on the wall. Putting a manned camera crew in the team meeting room is too intrusive," Trout says of the robotics.
"So much of preseason is about player evaluation. That's why we don't care about the staff meeting rooms. This is more about the stakes of the season and not who's going to make the team."
Teams have the ability to screen the episodes before they hit air, but there's already a built-in trust between the crew and Bengals ownership. Trout and Bengals executive vice president Katie Blackburn go back to '09, and Trout recalls a clip of her playing tennis with teenage daughters Elizabeth and Caroline, now club execs.
"There aren't a lot of people still around," Trout says, "but I always tell people this is one of my favorite places."
Everyone knows the stars. Joe Burrow. Ja’Marr Chase. Trey Hendrickson. Tee Higgins. But that doesn't necessarily mean they'll be the stars of the show.
So Trout can't tell you if Burrow is going to be the marquee guy like Chad was in 2009. For every Chad and Carson Palmer snippet, there was enough video of the rookie experience of Chris Pressley and the comeback of veteran Chris Henry to swipe storylines.
"We don't know. We haven't started filming," Trout says. "Someone else always jumps off the page. Every week we wipe the slate clean and there are new storylines. It's not about Joe or Zac (Taylor). It's the story of the team."
Trout's familiarity with the club is enhanced with the arrival of former Bengals video assistant Evan Cooley on his crew. Cooley is the latest on Bengals video director Travis Brammer's assembly line of up-and-comers.
"It's almost like a coaching tree," Cooley says.
Brooks Santanello is now running the Commanders' video department. Craig Patterson went to the Titans as assistant video director. Ricky Palmer went to Cleveland as the assistant after being the boss at Rutgers. After working with Brammer the previous two seasons, Cooley wanted to branch out and is now a production assistant for NFL Films.
"It's nice to have a person who knows the lay of the land," Cooley says. "I've been here and been through a game week, so I can tell them about how practice works and show them the way around.
"I love using cameras and I love the NFL. This is the best job to merge the two."
That probably sums up the spirit of Hard Knocks as well as anything. It certainly sums up how the show feels about the Bengals.
Trout believes the 2009 show is a watershed moment in the genre when it "went from niche to the mainstream." It drew the highest ratings of any Hard Knocks and won the show its first two sports Emmys: Outstanding Edited Sports Series or Anthology and Outstanding Post Produced Audio / Sound.
It also cemented the trust that remains from those days when the late great NFL Films creator Steve Sabol hailed Bengals president Mike Brown for allowing the most open Hard Knocks of all.
"I think what this series has done more than anything else out there is humanize players," Trout says. "Try to take the helmets off. Get to know these guys as husbands and sons and brothers and friends."
