 It's arguably the greatest dynasty in NFL history. The Patriots winning six Super Bowl titles with Bill Belichick and Tom Brady. Now, you get an inside look at the highs and lows of that run. Courtesy of Apple TV plus the dynasty. New England Patriots episodes one and two are available right now. We have Michael Holly here. We have Tom Kern here. I'm Phil Perry. We are going to go over this thing with a fine tooth comb. We're going to have a lot of fun reminiscing. Nostalgia to me is the big picture take away from these first two episodes. If you were like me sitting at home and you were in high school as this was happening, I wasn't boots on the ground the way these two were. He said high school. Sophomore in high school, following this team with every single breath. I loved it. I loved everything that brought to the table. All of the unseen video Brady at his new pad bought from Ty Law. All of the behind the scenes stuff that we hadn't heard from in-game before Brady being drafted. There was a lot of stuff even for somebody like me who covers the team now and has for the last 10 years. That is completely new. Tom, what was your big picture take away after watching the first two episodes? Personally, the biggest feeling I had was one of gratitude. You mentioned the greatest dynasty in NFL history, arguably I'd take the arguably away and I would call it the greatest dynasty, especially over a compressed period in the history of American professional sports. And I was lucky enough to be there to watch it to experience it, to be as close as anyone could be to the argument Brady or Bledsoe and to actually have felt as if Drew Bledsoe was doomed. That was one takeaway that I would have globally on the series is in these first two episodes, the entire landscape is laid out Michael as to what was going on. But I feel as if the vulnerability of Drew Bledsoe was much more clear after he had gone five and 13 and Bill Belichick had undressed him numerous times. The fan base was ready for a change regardless of that $100 billion contract. Yeah, Tom, I'm glad you said it that way too, like the gratitude, because let's face it, it changed our lives and we were able to, one, just from a sports observers and sports commentator standpoint, we were able to see football at such a high level. But because of that, certain things, no, we got interviews that we wouldn't normally get. We got opportunities that we wouldn't normally get all because we were associated loosely with the greatest, that's right, arguably taken away from that, the greatest dynasty in NFL history. What stood out to me was watching young Tom Brady. Tom Brady, when no one knew who he was, the anonymous Brady, I think it's the most genuine Brady we've seen as Patriots fans. It's like seeing Brad Pitt before he was famous. It's like seeing Mick Jagger, like in a dive bar. He's talking trash, the tech mobile tricks that he used to have, the back and forth with David Nugent, I thought that was all great stuff. And Phil, the competitiveness as we think about it, no, we're not talking about the Patriots of current day, but when you look at a quarterback and the traits that you want, give me that stuff, give me that guy who's insatiable. I gotta get better. I wanna keep fighting. I'm gonna throw the remote against the wall and put a hole in it. I'm gonna walk around the neighborhood with a baseball bat in my hand and pound it into my palm until I get drafted. Give me that guy. What's our feeling on Drew Bledsoe? Because he is the star, I always believed he was articulate, incredibly intelligent, kind of a man's man. But by 2000, 2001, he was exhausted. He was world weary and beaten down. He had gone from Parcells to Pete Carroll. He'd gone through a million offensive coordinators and he felt and seemed as if he had seen it all before. And there's an entitlement to Drew Bledsoe, I believe that comes out in this episode, Phil. We've always heard Drew was the best teammate and I'm like, hey, he looked good at the podium, but there was plenty of... Yeah, there's a lot of stuff behind us. What about me? And the what about me he would have deserved if it wasn't that he was unbelievably vulnerable because he wasn't playing that great. Let's dig a little bit deeper into this Brady Bledsoe, quote, unquote, controversy because the meat and the potatoes of episode one involved the quarterback controversy between Bledsoe and Brady, a young Brady, taking over for Bledsoe, of course, after that hit from Mo Lewis that we'll never forget and Brady never gave his job back, which he was very open about talking about with his teammates and there's great clips from lawyer Maloy and Ty Law about their memories of being at dinner with Tom Brady and Brady letting them know, I ain't given this bleep back. And they laughed at him is how they remember it. And I wonder, Michael, did you get that sense covering the team the way you did at that point in time that the players were very wary of this guy stepping into Bledsoe's shoes and actually being able to have success no matter how confident he was? Well, I think Tom is right. There was an appetite for something else, something different. And Brady, not only the entitlement, Tom, I think the lack of awareness of Tom Brady and how he was pushing him. So Brady, in 2000 as the fourth quarterback got the coach's attention, not because he was great at that point. They kept all four in the active roster. Okay, you keep four quarterbacks on the roster and you say, this guy is not a threat. Hey, Tom, they kept, I mean, it's true. They kept four quarterbacks. Active, not even on the practice squad. So that should have been the first clue. The other thing, the Brady advantage that Bledsoe didn't take into consideration. In 2000, Charlie Weiss was a new offensive coordinator. That means Brady and Bledsoe got a new offense at the same time. It was just a matter of who was gonna devour it more, who was gonna be into it. So Brady intellectually was right there with Bledsoe in knowledge of the offense. He had no inside info there. And the other thing is, and I was talking with Tom about this before the show started, we both remember, 2001, Tom Brady had a fantastic training camp and there was a meeting in August among the coaches and they said, hey, Tom Brady is probably our best quarterback right now, but we gotta go with Bledsoe. And Michael makes a great point, Tom, where he talks about Charlie Weiss coming in and bringing in new offense because the people who very clearly in the Dynasty series that paint a picture of Drew was done. He was cooked and they were played about it. It was the guys in charge. It was Bill Belichick, Scott Peely and Ernie Adams. You heard from players who believed, well, this was our guy and we're not sure about, but what did Brady ever done? Teddy Bruce, he's one of Tom Brady's great friends right now. Tom had never done a damn thing for us. And so why would we believe in him in that moment? Laughed at him when Brady went to the front of the room and told these guys, hey, believe in me because I'm gonna be pretty damn good here. Drew Bledsoe's strength was that he was a downfield thrower. He was not a rhythm thrower. He was not an accurate thrower. He was a big arm strong, you know, Merino-esque player, but he was not quick and he wasn't a quick decision maker and they needed a quick decision maker with this offense. And just to actually amplify the attitude, I went back and found this quote for the hell of it. This is lawyer Malloy from September 26, 2001. Quote, talking to some of the guys on the offensive side of the ball, they said, Brady goes in there and we'll say, okay, look guys, I need a little more or run a good route because I'm coming to you. He's just that kind of vocal presence that I think they need over there right now. That is the days after Bledsoe got hurt. That was before his first start. He guys believed that Brady was better and I just don't know why, whether it be Charlie Weiss or I've heard guys in the past say nobody knew it was coming. Well, nobody knew this was coming. But you did know that Bledsoe was very vulnerable. Well, memory's a funny thing too, right, Mike? I mean, this is a long time ago now. We're talking 20 plus years and I wonder if guys who are still friends with Drew and who liked Drew at the time and like him now view it as in moments like these, whether it's consciously or subconsciously, they don't wanna run up the scoreboard on Drew. And so if they today, sitting down in a chair on a docu-series is gonna be viewed by millions of people say, we knew all along that Tom Brady was a lot better than Drew Bledsoe. How does that come off? And so I wonder if their perspective has changed at all because we know that that happens with memory, we're all human. But that's right, but I think the truth is somewhere in the middle here. It's fair to say that, Ty Law on the documentary says, he wasn't Tom Brady the goat, he was just Tom. And even Tom said, hey, we won that game but it wasn't because of my stellar quarterback play. So it wasn't Tom Brady that we saw in 2003, 2004, but it was a Brady who was ready, who was ready to take the job and had the confidence. The confidence was always there. We saw that, I mean, can I just say as a quick aside, shame on the NFL draft evaluators still haven't learned their lessons. I'm not saying they should have known that Tom Brady was gonna be the greatest of all time. But stop it, Chad Pennington, your first quarterback taken. Hey, I like Chad Pennington. I know you did, but I think you like Tom Brady better than Chad Pennington. You also like Gardner Binshew and St. Barneau. Before Tom Brady. I like Mark Palco. Gio Carmasi before Tom Brady. Like stop this. And we still have a lot of these big swings and misses because with time, I think sometimes evaluators overthink, Tom Brady, despite what the story is, he did play at Michigan. I saw him play as an Ohio State fan. I saw him play many games at Michigan. He was a captain. He won his last game in dramatic fashion against Alabama I think in the Orange Bowl. So he was a big time college football player that the NFL missed. One of the best things about these first two episodes to me is you get to see the start of a love story. If you want to put it that way between Belichick and Brady and Belichick talks openly about how Brady pushed him to be the best version of himself. And there's great clips of them showing up to the facility before the sun has even come up. What did you make of Bill's performance and how he reacted to some of the questions that he got in those first two episodes? As you watch this, you'll see Michael Holly does the best job I think of. And Michael and I are both in the series of different junctures. I come in a little later with the drama. But Mike did an excellent job of talking about why they were wedded, why Belichick and Brady were such soulmates and how much Brady pushed Belichick. And Belichick would always talk about that. Tom was so prepared that I had to have stuff for him because I wasn't teaching him anything that he didn't know. He needed more and more and more. But what was so striking about Belichick is he worked in 2000 and 2001 to renovate his reputation when he arrived in New England. He spent a lot of time with a lot of different writers, not me, because I was still at the Metro West Daily News and not rising to the level of being able to be paid attention to. But he spent a lot of time trying to show that he was approachable. And you're going to see it prior to the snowball. Belichick on the sidelines, Steve Burton is wishing that he could get the treatment that whatever sideline reported before the snowball got, because he's like, yeah, I think we're going to be OK out there. The footing isn't bad. It'll be all right. And I'm telling you, Steve Burton just spent 23 years getting his forehead peed on by Bill before every freaking preseason game. But Bill then was, I'm not saying warming cuddly. What an image. Thank you. Smiley, enjoyable, so, so informative and able to be jousted with, actually, because you didn't have social media appearing over your shoulder and saying, oh, you just started something with the coach. You're after him here. No, that was the job. We're across purposes. We're doing that. And even when he's getting hard questions, Michael, are you going to go with Bledsoe? Now that he's been cleared to play, he's healthy enough to play, you're going to stick with Tom Brady. There is a little bit more of a back and forth than we're used to seeing over the course of the last few years here, where if it's a question that he doesn't like or he does want to get into, it's a lot of one word answers. Yeah, you know, now in 2023, it became, and before, 22, 21, hey, I'm doing what's best for the team. I'm doing what's next question, whatever, on the Cincinnati, all that stuff. But then remember, he spelled it out. I'm doing what's best for the TEAM team. That's what Mr. Kraft is paying me to do. And I'm doing what's best and all this stuff. But I would say, also, the connection between Bill and Tom, don't get caught up in the superficial differences between them. One guy looks like a supermodel in 6'4", and very handsome, and the other guy, it's just like kind of the dour coach and who's kind of just all in the clips when he's got the glasses on in Cleveland and he's going, the math professor. What really drew them together was their insatiable love for football, insatiable. And so that's what that's what Belichick was drawn to, and Drew didn't have that. I mean, Drew was very talented, but Drew could move on from football after practice, practice. Hey, football's over. He was ready to quit when he lost the job. I'm going to drink my wine and move on, and Brady was never like that. Not ready to quit, but you'll see. Well, kind of, he did say that. I thought, and one of my favorite, even though Bill in the first two episodes, at least, we don't get a ton from him in terms of words that we're hearing, I think you got a lot of insight into his thought processes at the time via Ernie Adams. There are so many tremendous interviews that are a part of this series already, you can see, through the first two episodes. Ernie Adams, Scott Piolli, Adam Venetieri, I thought had the quote of all quotes where he's saying that team in 2001, this is after the snowball, that wasn't Bill's team. That wasn't Tom's team. There was no star on that team, and we all had ownership of that team because of that. And I feel like Bill Belichick was speaking through Venetieri in that moment. Okay, much more coming up on the Dynasty here. After the show tonight, after early edition, maybe before BST Fridays, you're gonna want to listen to this podcast if you haven't already. Check out the latest Patriots Talk podcast for much more on the Dynasty series. Tommy Kern, catching up with the director, Matt Hammercheck. You can scan the QR code on the screen or find it on your favorite podcasting app or on YouTube. Coming up, we're joined by a very special guest as Jeff Benedict, author of the Dynasty, stops by to discuss the Docuseries. Let's just say we have plenty of questions to ask him. Stick around. All right, we're continuing to discuss the Docuseries, the Dynasty, the New England Patriots, with episodes one and two, available now on Apple TV Plus, and joining us now is the author of the bestselling book, which this entire Docuseries is based on. Jeff Benedict, Jeff, thanks so much for being with us here. So much work we know went into this. I'm curious as to your thoughts on some of the conversation we just had a little bit earlier in the show when it comes to memory and how things are perceived now versus when you're going through some of the source material, how they were perceived back then and how those things competed against each other or complimented each other. How do you choose what to use, what to focus on in a situation like that? Well, because the story has such a long arc, I think we felt as filmmakers, I certainly felt this as a writer is that the first couple of episodes should be more nostalgic. I mean, those early years where Tom and Bill are new, Tom's like a boy, Bill's a new coach. There's a lot of nostalgia in that part of the Dynasty series. We know that's gonna change dramatically over time, but we thought for viewers, for fans, that beginning is it should feel nostalgic because it was different. And Jeff, you know, you talked about the beginning and I was gonna ask you to stop the year. I said, no, I'm gonna ask him on the year. I think people need to understand like how long this process, this project was in the making. Sure. So when did you do the first interview for the Apple TV piece of it? When did that first happen? So how long? For me, totally the whole process was six years, but the documentary itself, I started thinking about it and kind of putting the pieces together for it in like March of 2020, right as I finished writing the last scene for the book. And by the fall, as Tom is starting as a buccaneer, we were really starting to ramp up, getting a streamer involved, getting the production company involved, then getting Matt Hammetcheck to come in. Our first interview, though, is like a year and a half after that. And so that was two years ago. We did our first interview. It was actually Paul Taglibo, who doesn't even make the cut. But that was our first interview. Sorry, Tags. That's what I'm sorry. Hall of Famer. Tags didn't make it. Hey, when you go into this venture, it has to begin with somebody. You have to ask somebody first. You're not gonna ask Ernie Adams, you're gonna go to Robert Kraft. In going to Robert Kraft, he said he's told me in the past, I've had oodles of opportunities to tell my story, but I chose Jeff Benedict. Why did he choose you? And did he have any say, editorially, or in, I don't want that out there, I'd like this out there, can we say how great I was, any of that? Yeah, so first of all, I mean, I chose him and them first, because I approached them, obviously they didn't approach me. Right. I approached the team. And when I said team, I went to the owner first because being an outsider, you guys are not outsiders. I'm a total outsider, right? I have no connection to the team. So the way I looked at it as an outsider was if I want to get inside the organization, I need to go to the top of the organization. I don't need to go to Tom Brady or Bill or anyone else. I need to go to the owner. And so that's why I went there. I mean, call me naive or whatever, but that's where I started. And so similarly, having worked on the book for two plus years, when I wanted to pursue a documentary series, I did the same thing. But it was different this time because now I had a relationship. I wasn't an outsider anymore in the sense that now they knew who I was and they partly knew what they were getting because I'd been around them for two plus years. And I really, when I first presented it, it was like I wanted to take what's in this book and turn it into a film. Was there anything in it that, editorially that Kraft like objected to because I think there's a perception. Right. In this region, owners are always under the gun. And Robert Kraft is always under the gun despite all the great things that I think he has done and people criticize him. He always won't, you know, they used to call him red light Kraft early on in his tenure here. So what's your perception of how much involvement he had or overrule or say? And I don't want that out there. Yeah. He didn't have editorial control over the film just like he didn't have editorial control over the book. I think that's why the trust factor is so important. And not just with me, but also, you know, when Matt Hammercheck comes into the process, you have to have trust in the film maker and in the production company. Imagine we had at the top of that company, Ron Howard and Brian Grazier, who have great reputations. And so you at least know you're gonna get a quality product from the production side. But I think a lot of it was knowing, look, in order for this film to be credible, I mean, let's just be honest. You can't write a book and expect people to buy it and believe it, if you're gonna skip over Aaron Hernandez and Spygate and Deflategate and the fracture that is eventually gonna happen with Bill and Tom, if you're gonna either skip or dance around those things, you lose credibility. The first time you'd lose credibility is in 2007, in the story. It's easy to write to 07. Because nothing really happened. That's problematic. But when you get to 07 and you get accused of cheating, how are you gonna deal with that as a writer? And how are you gonna deal with that as filmmakers? My view was if you don't just plow straight into it, then that's when you're gonna lose the audience. You know what, Jeff? Just from a viewer's perspective, and you have a different perspective on this. When I looked at Bill Belichick in this series, he looked uncomfortable, he looked reluctant to talk, especially compared to Kraft, who went back and was anecdotal and told some jokes. Tom Brady, as I said off the top, Tom Brady was profane and hilarious and competitive and just really into the spirit of it. Bill looked uncomfortable. Do you agree with that assessment? And if so, why? Why was he like that? I think he is clearly uncomfortable. You can't look at the interview and say, he looks right at home. He's not right at home. The truth is, this is not the world that Bill is comfortable in and it's not a world he's really ever lived in. This is not NFL films, right? This is not really a football film. That sounds weird to say that because this is about the greatest football team of all time, but it's really not a football story. That's just a skeletal framework of it. And I think so for Bill, we're not asking Bill about what he did on third and 10. This is not that story. Robert and Tom, I think, are more sort of naturally inclined to be able to talk about things that are personal to them. Tom cries in the film, in the series, right? Robert gets choked up at times in the series and it's not hard for them to get to that emotional point. Bill is programmed to never get there. And so when you put him in this environment, this is a very foreign place for him to be. And I just think that that's part of what you're talking about, Michael, when you say he looks uncomfortable. I mean, just look at the way people are dressed. Willie McGinnis comes in a sweatshirt because that's who he is. Tom Brady came the way he, Robert wears the same blue coat you see him wear all the time, right? How does Bill look? Is he in a hooded sweatshirt? No, he's in a suit and tie. You never see Bill in a suit and tie. He just doesn't like the garnishes and the decorativeness. And he would rather talk about football in a sweatshirt to a room full of offensive line coaches than sit there because having heard him, Phil, you and I have covered him for a long time now, it would seem it's excessive, it's unnecessary, we don't want this, this is just a credit grab. But then deep down, you always wonder if the credit grabbing that was always done was quietly done by Bill. What's interesting is he's the guy who always says you have to be comfortable being uncomfortable, right? But he's very clearly uncomfortable here and it doesn't yield amazing results at least through the first two episodes. What was the most uncomfortable it got as people who are putting this together and asking these hard questions, whether it's Aaron Hernandez or Spygate or anything else, what was the most uncomfortable you were on that side of things broaching some of these topics? Well, I think, look, the Aaron Hernandez stuff was difficult for everybody involved including those of us who were preparing and asking questions because this is something that is so unusual to be talking about in the context of sports. And some players who are in the series who talked for the first time about it, Dion Branch in particular who lived across the street from Aaron, his interview was so emotional and revealing for him that I was sitting there when Dion was talking, I literally couldn't believe what I was hearing from him. You could hear a pin drop in the studio that day. I mean, there were times when there were just gaps of silence because he was pausing and actually auditing himself about what he didn't do back at the time. And it was just his honesty and his candor was, I mean, it just stunned everybody. So you go from that range to then having to ask people, you know, when we cover the Donald Trump stuff. Yeah. I mean, you talk about uncomfortable. When we have those interviews with Devin McCordy, with Matthew Slater, with some of the players that were in the locker room and were the leaders of the team at that time. That was, I mean, the tension in the studio when those interviews were happening were remarkable. And so I don't know that I could point to one thing and say that was the most. We had one interview with Teddy Bruceke and we interviewed Teddy multiple times, but I remember this one well. It was in Boston and his wife was there for this one and Teddy was talking about what it was like to play for Bill. And that hasn't come up yet, but man, we had to break in the middle of the interview. Well, unfortunately we have to break right now. We can talk to you all night about the first two episodes of the Dynasty out on Apple TV Plus. Right now, watch it if you haven't already. Jeff, thank you so much. Tommy Carmichael Holley, thank you. Can't wait to go over the rest of the series over the next few weeks. Stick with us.