No major American professional sport has a longer offseason than the NFL, but the league never fails to find ways to turn professional football into a year-round entertainment product. As fans wait out the final summer months before their favorite teams suit up on the gridirons again, they can always count on new prestige documentaries to tide them over until kickoff.

For years, the summer football documentary niche was monopolized by HBO, whose annual training camp documentary “Hard Knocks” has long been beloved by sports media consumers. But Netflix got into the game in 2023 with “Quarterback,” an eight-part documentary that followed quarterbacks Patrick Mahomes, Kirk Cousins, and Marcus Mariota over the course of a season playing the sport’s most important position.

The streaming giant repeats the formula with the upcoming “Receiver,” which puts five of the NFL’s top wide receivers in the spotlight. Amon-Ra St. Brown of the Detroit Lions,...