Jeff Fisher: 'Highly unlikely' St. Louis Rams will be on 'Hard Knocks'

St. Louis Rams head coach Jeff Fisher leads the team's rookie mini camp. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

St. Louis Rams head coach Jeff Fisher said that it is "highly unlikely" that the team would appear on HBO's "Hard Knocks" this season.

Based on the NFL's criteria for selection for the show -- which follows a team during training camp and preseason -- the Rams are one of eight NFL teams that could appear on the show. The criteria for the NFL to mandate that a team cooperates with HBO is as follows: The team has not appeared in any "Hard Knocks" before, hasn't made the playoffs in the past two years and doesn't have a new head coach.

“I think it’s unlikely,” Fisher said to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “We are eligible, but I think it’s highly unlikely they’d ask us to do it. I think this organization has a right to go through training camp with some normalcy.”

The other seven teams that meet that standard are the Arizona Cardinals, Buffalo Bills, Chicago Bears, Jacksonville Jaguars, New York Giants, Oakland Raiders and Pittsburgh Steelers.

The Rams were possible candidates for the show after team selected Michael Sam in the seventh round of this month's draft. Sam, the first openly gay player, was in discussions with the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) to produce a docuseries, but the series has been postponed.

"That thing settled down last week. We had a very productive meeting with the network," Fisher said. "They understand our position; we understand theirs. We felt, and they collectively felt, the best thing to do was just to postpone it.”

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