When it comes to sports that are known and loved around the world, American football probably isn’t up there in the same way that association football or cricket both are.

Yet the fact that it is seen as the national sport of the United States of America means that there are plenty of people in that country who not only enjoy the sport but who also follow it religiously.

The likelihood is that they will already have seen all of these documentaries, but there are plenty of people who might want to learn a bit more about gridiron and want to watch a documentary or two to help them on their journey.

The obvious question to ask is, which are the best ones to watch?

Hard Knocks

The good news for people wanting to watch as much as they can about American football is that the National Football League is exceptionally good at producing shows and films that take you behind the scenes time and time again. When it comes to Hard Knocks, we’re talking about a television series that was first broadcast in 2001, produced by NFL Films to be shown on HBO.

Generally speaking, the series follows an NFL team from training camp through the upcoming season of football, introducing us to the players, the coaches and the staff that make an NFL team work.

The first year of production, the series followed the Baltimore Ravens. Since then, it has followed the likes of the Dallas Cowboys, the Kansas City Chiefs and the Miami Dolphins, some more than once. From 2021, there has been a second series each season that has followed a team in-season.

Whilst it is obviously slightly sanitised, given the fact that it is produced by the National Football League itself, you are unlikely to see anything that gets the kind of access that Hard Knocks manages. If you want to learn about what goes into an NFL season, this is exactly the right place to start.

Undefeated

Directed by Daniel Lindsay and T. J. Martin and produced by the now disgraced Sean “Diddy” Combs, Undefeated tells the story of a struggling high school football team that has lost repeatedly, but is attempting to spend a season winning.

The Manassas Tigers in Memphis hired a new coach, Bill Courtney, in the hopes that he would be able to turn around the club’s fortunes. Given the fact that between the teams’ formation in 1899 and the time that the documentary began filming, the team had never won a playoff game, it’s fair to say that he had his work cut out for him.

The film focusses on three underprivileged students at the school who come from inner-city Memphis, as well as Courtney himself. He works to nurture both the talents and the physical and mental well-being of his charges, telling a story that any sports documentary fan will’ve seen before, but doing so in an entertaining and touching manner.

With star player O.C. as the driving force of the team, the desire to end a 110-year losing streak is palpable. We won’t spoil what happens here, but we can tell you that the film itself went on to win the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature.

Untold: Johnny Football

There are a whole host of Untold documentaries out there, with both Johnny Football and Swamp Kings fitting into the category of ones based around gridiron action that you might want to check out. This one is about the rise and subsequent fall of Johnny Manziel, who was the starting quarterback for the Cleveland Browns for two seasons.

We follow him starting out in his career as a successful player in college for the Texas A&M Aggies, through to his time on the field with the Browns. Whether such success at a young age messed him up or not, his life was filled with controversy.

Johnny Manziel was going to fail a drug test so his dad was ready to do the only thing he could: fake a heart attack.

UNTOLD: Johnny Football is now on Netflix pic.twitter.com/fBy0jqO3Z1

— Netflix (@netflix) August 9, 2023

He decided to engage in a life that was filled with partying, which eventually caught up with him and led to him being dropped by both the Cleveland Browns and his agent. The documentary could certainly have gone deeper into Manziel’s life, instead offering some scant insight into his mental state at the time but not pushing things as far as might have been interesting.

Even so, there is plenty about this episode of the Netflix series to recommend it, showing something of a career in a spiral that eventually led to him playing his football in Canada to try to get his life back together.

Year of the Scab

As with Untold, 30 for 30 is another documentary series that has plenty to tell us about the life and times of some of American football’s most interesting stories.

In the case of Year of the Scab, it is a documentary that chronicles what happened to the team that was known as the Washington Redskins in 1987, which was when replacement players were brought in to complete the team’s fixtures as the regular players went on strike. It is a piece that looks at the experiences of those players, including how many of them are still viewed negatively even to this day.

The strike ended up bringing the season to a premature end, but the team of ‘scabs’ helped the club to manage an overall record of 11-4 before that. The entire thing culminated in a 42-10 win for the Redskins at Super Bowl XXII, with Doug Williams becoming the first African-American quarterback to start in an NFL league championship game, to say nothing of a Super Bowl.

As the title suggests, the main drive of the story is around the team being made up of players that had been put together rather hastily, getting to play but tainting their own reputation after crossing the picket line.

America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders

If you want to watch something that is pretty much entirely about the football itself, this documentary series won’t be for you. If, on the other hand, you’d like to explore more around every aspect of the National Football League, then America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders will be exactly what you’re after.

This is all about what it takes to become one of the most recognisable cheerleaders in the United States of America, taking us behind the scenes of the tryouts and the rehearsals that end up producing one of the NFL’s most thrilling spectacles.

The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders like you’ve never seen them before. AMERICA’S SWEETHEARTS: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders premieres June 20th on Netflix pic.twitter.com/RPPkH19QYy

— Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders (@DCCheerleaders) May 28, 2024

If you don’t know much about the life of a cheerleader, there is a very real chance that this series will be eye-opening for you. The girls who make up the cheerleading squad are paid such a pitiful amount for their troubles that they all have to have real jobs to supplement their income, leaving them both mentally and physically exhausted as they attempt to prove they have what it takes to make the squad.

We follow them from the moment they first audition through to when they get to run out on the field ahead of a fixture, all whilst Thunderstruck by AC/DC blasts through the sound system.

Four Falls of Buffalo

Another documentary from ESPN’s 30 for 30 series, Four Falls of Buffalo looks at the period in the 1990s when the Buffalo Bills lost four straight Super Bowls. Because the documentary was put together many years after the Bills suffered said losses, the talking heads get to speak about what happened with the benefit of hindsight.

All four of the failed Super Bowl attempts had a story of their own, such as the 47-yard field goal miss that Scott Norwood suffered at the end of Super Bowl XXV, which is part of what gives this documentary its colour and its sense of interest.

It is easy enough to make documentaries that explore a team’s success, but one that looks at the heartbreak and the pitfalls of a season is all the more interesting. One of the most fascinating parts of the film is an interview with Norwood and the former Bills Special Teams coach Bruce DeHaven, which was conducted on the steps of the City Hall in Buffalo where a crowd of fans of the team had cheered for Norwood in the wake of his missed kick years before.

The documentary also pays the Bills the respect that the team deserves, given the fact that it made four Super Bowls in the first place.