When NFL Network launched the series “A Football Life” in 2011, it was designed to focus on players, coaches and owners — men who spent their lives in football.
Over the past few years, though, NFL Network’s definition of what constitutes a football life has expanded. Early this year, it premiered an episode on the 2006 Rose Bowl. In 2012, it devoted one episode to the 1995 Cleveland Browns, who moved to Baltimore, and another focused on one play, the 1972 Immaculate Reception.
Those aren’t football lives.
“There are some episodes of that series that, well, they aren’t lives,” said Ken Rodgers, coordinating producer for NFL Films. “Instead of the lives that define the National Football League and its history, we want to make a series about all the moments that define its history.”
 |
The first episode in "The Timeline" series airs this week with "Favre Returns."
|
The result is a six-episode documentary series called “The Timeline,” that launches this week. The first episode, called “Favre Returns,” follows the former Packers quarterback as he returns to Lambeau Field for his Packers Hall of Fame induction and jersey retirement.
“We’ve done a full feature documentary on Brett Favre, and we’ll probably do one about his entire career again one day,” Rodgers said. “It’s not the definitive film on Brett Favre. It’s the definitive film about one moment on that timeline.”
Rodgers and his colleague, NFL Films senior producer Paul Camarata, said they developed the series around Super Bowl 50, coming up with important moments in the league’s history.
Other documentaries that already have been scheduled for December include ones on the New York Giants of the 1980s (“Jersey Guys”), the 49ers-Cowboys rivalry (“A Tale of Two Cities”), the AFL-NFL merger (“The Merger”) and the 1980 Super Bowl that Iranian hostages were allowed to listen to (“America’s Game and the Iran Hostage Crisis”).
“We have the luxury to think as fans in terms of what intrigues us, and bring our fandom to the fore in terms of storytellers,” Camarata said. “We were kicking around topics the way you would over beers almost. Those moments that resonate so much with us as fans really feels like fertile ground to explore and exploit.”
Stories the producers would like to do for this series include a look at the five years Buddy Ryan coached the Eagles, and a dissection of the famed “Tuck Rule.”
