The obligatory narration about safety from Jonathan Owens and his gymnastics gold medalist wife Simone Biles was entertaining, but it was just a distraction from the real story being told about this team.

The intro told the story of a historic series’ reconstruction efforts, but it missed the mark for one important reason.

Hopefully more will become clear and revealed as we move into the second part of the series next week.

Here’s the good, the bad and the ugly of HBO’s Hard Knocks: Training Camp with the Chicago Bears.

Good

One of the good parts was more like “perfect” was Nick Saban visiting Halas Hall and talking to his former player.

It doesn’t matter that this appeared to be done for the HBO cameras, not the visit and the speech. Did Saban now just choose to come and see his former player from long ago as Toledo coach? He could have come at any time, even during the regular season. He is retired, after all. Did HBO have anything to do with it?

Throughout the season, people are constantly coming to Halas Hall to see someone or something.

And Saban never came to see where he could coach. After all, the Bears tried so hard to get him there in 2004, then refused to give up and eventually hired Lovie Smith. It worked for both sides, but Saban worked better for Chicago.

That visit really provided the moment of clarity needed to set up the rest of the series and the Bears’ season. It was Saban’s comment about Williams.

“To me, expectations are a killer,” Saban told Eberflus in a one-on-one conversation. “This kid, this kid has so much media, so much hype, so many expectations of him to perform, and he has to improve so quickly to meet everyone’s expectations of him. It’s almost impossible.”

Indeed, it is. That pretty much sums up the Bears’ entire rebuild heading into this season. The hopes and fears are riding on this quarterback, second to Ryan Poles and Eberflus, but the first quarterback they’ve actually drafted. And there’s no way he lives up to the hype.

Eberflus responded with a need for development. Therein lies the problem. Eberflus’s stated time frame for developing Williams is three years. Who has the patience for three years of development in the third year of a rebuilding franchise mired in a losing quagmire?

It’s a huge pressure.

Another interesting part of the conversation was Saban talking about QB coaching.

“I always stood behind the quarterback,” Saban said. “I always wanted to hear his version of what was going on.”

Bad

Ugly

Meanwhile, it hasn’t escaped the media that we only know Benedet’s hamstring pull is bad because HBO was allowed to reveal it. The Bears don’t release information about injuries in the preseason unless it’s important.

Why not bring in the coach and let him give the media the same injury update? Back in the day, the media could get it from the coach themselves if they wanted to.

Twitter: Bears in SI