‘The Dynasty’ isn’t perfect, and neither is Bill
Bill Belichick is many things: an inscrutable football genius, a sharp-witted voice of vagueness, a one-of-a-kind coaching legend. One description that doesn’t fit the former Patriots coach: a martyr.
Yet, if you listen to some of the feedback on the 10-part Apple TV+ series detailing the Patriots’ six-Super Bowl, nearly two-decade reign, “The Dynasty,” you would think otherwise. There’s a feeling that Belichick, to use a reality TV term, got a bad edit.
Personally, it feels like the Patriots’ offseason approach of reloading the same players from Belichick’s final 4-13 season is a bigger act of blaming and shaming His Hoodiness than the content of the documentary. Apparently, all the 2024 Patriots need is a new coach and a new quarterback not terrorized by Belichick.
The following statements can both be true: Belichick deserves credit for the dawn of the dynasty with his prescience and brilliance. He also is primarily responsible for its demise with his hubris and intractability.
That’s not a smear job. That’s a reality as gray as one of his trademark cut-off hoodies. It’s an accurate and fair portrayal of Belichick’s reign of excellence (and terror).
It’s understandable that former Patriots like Rodney Harrison and Devin McCourty feel dissatisfied with the documentary.
There wasn’t enough time spent on the Patriots winning or football. But this was never going to be a documentary for Patriots fans, players, or followers familiar with the story. It’s designed to draw a wider audience, so the more salacious parts were featured.
But the only episode that unfairly impugns Belichick is the one on Aaron Hernandez; implying culpability in a killing was a Gillette Stadium
bridge too far.
We live in a time when people have a difficult time accepting truth that’s unflattering to someone they admire or adore. Belichick isn’t just a gridiron god. He’s a man, fallible and flawed like all of us. Winning football games doesn’t change that or serve as absolution.
Frankly, the reason Belichick looks bad in this documentary is that he continues to be obstinate, uninformative, and unaccountable. When pressed on some of the thornier times during his 24 seasons as coach, it was hard to tell if Belichick was sitting for a documentary or a deposition.
You forfeit the right to complain about how you’re portrayed when you refuse to participate or illuminate. The juxtaposition of Belichick’s obdurate nature and his former players, former coaches, and even confidant/consigliere Ernie Adams peeling back the iron curtain of Fort Foxborough exacerbates his presentation.
They’re letting you in, while Belichick continues to box us out.
How about this classic exchange with director Matthew Hamachek about the benching of Malcolm Butler in Super Bowl LII.
Belichick: “Matt, we’ve talked about that.”
Hamachek: “I didn’t ask you about it.”
Belichick then delivers his patented silent icy glare into the camera.
There’s nothing unfair about the portrayal of Belichick’s decision to bench Butler on defense. It punctured all the team-first, self-subjugation pablum that Belichick fed the team over the years, revealing it to be a sanctimonious version of “Do as I say, not as I do.”
The hand-wringing over the handling of the Hoodie and perceived unfairness has become hysterical and hyperbolic. The doc’s timing probably makes it feels worse because Belichick’s ouster is still fresh.
The final three years of the dynasty (2017-19) featured the joyless pursuit of perfection and a dysfunctional relationship between the two principals of the team’s dominance, Tom Brady and Belichick.
Robert Kraft described their relationship as “unnatural and uncomfortable.” It was a coach/QB Cold War, as this space wrote.
The eminently credible voice of 13time captain and soul of the locker room Matthew Slater confirmed the friction, saying that there was “awkward silence and tension” between the two during captains’ meetings in 2018.
Belichick’s critical error was refusing to treat Brady like a partner in the team’s enduring success instead of a disposable cog.
Kraft said the quiet part out loud: “Tommy is the greatest in the 100-year history of the game, and I think he represented a threat to Bill’s full power.”
The reality is Belichick underestimated Brady’s ability to defy Father Time and overestimated the impact of his coaching to sustain winning.
The bit of piling on is Danny Amendola saying, “I could have got the kid from Foxborough High School to tell you that you shouldn’t have let Tom Brady go.”
It mirrors the feedback Belichick gave to players — it’s harsh but not lacking for truth. If he can dish out, he should be able to take it.
The most valid criticism of the documentary is that it handles Kraft with a velvet touch.
Should the documentary, which featured a Kraft Productions imprimatur, have been more critical of the Krafts? Yes, but anyone who read the book the documentary is based on — also called “The Dynasty” — isn’t surprised.
It’s almost as if people forgot the Patriots handed out Jeff Benedict’s book as a gift to season ticket-holders.
Still, the logic of those who want to put Brady’s departure on Kraft’s ledger for not overruling Belichick is enough to cause whiplash. Now you want the owner meddling?
Belichick does get his deserved flowers in the documentary. The first three episodes are a love letter to him. There’s the episode on the 2008 season without Brady where that 11-win, non-playoff team is treated like the 1972 Dolphins.
Belichick’s genius is credited for winning the sixth crown, defeating the Rams in the lowest-scoring Super Bowl ever by switching to zone-based coverages.
“His ability to kind of like a chameleon change to attack a weakness is really, I think, unmatched,” Slater said.
It cuts to a clip of Steve Young saying, “Belichick took 11 defensive football players, and he painted his Mona Lisa.”
That final episode presents both the beauty and the irony of the complicated portrait of Belichick. A coach who was so protean with his schemes was completely the opposite with his comportment.
So willing to change his tactics on the field, he couldn’t bend his belief system when it came to the interpersonal element, even for the greatest player ever.
As Kraft offered, “Nothing is perfect in this world, as much as we would like it to be.”
Nothing is perfect — not this documentary, not Belichick.