New tell-all Patriots book features juicy anecdotes | You Pod to Win the Game
Yahoo Sports’ Charles Robinson and Pete Thamel discuss Seth Wickersham’s new book “It’s Better to Be Feared” that describes the Patriots’ dynasty from 2001-19. Hear the full conversation on the You Pod to Win the Game podcast. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or wherever you listen.
Video Transcript
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CHARLES ROBINSON: It is Brady, Belichick week in the NFL. That is a huge storyline. Seth Wickersham's book, "It's Better to be Feared," is now out there cataloging really about what, 18, 19 years of basically Brady and Belichick being together in New England. It's really a deep dive into I think the dynamics between Patriots' owner Robert Kraft, Bill Belichick, Tom Brady. I personally after reading it, and I've held back on doing the tweet blast, but I'm going to get there, I think it's one of the best football books I've ever read. Particularly just knowing the standpoint of how difficult it is to get people in New England to give you anecdotes about that relationship.
I have particularly enjoyed; there are two anecdotes that really, I don't want to give away the whole book here, because obviously, look, you're trying to sell books there, but to tease people. The two that I've really enjoyed and kind of made me feel like maybe Robert Kraft sees the world the way we do at times, it delves into Kraft at one point leaving like a conference, it's like basically like a business conference. All these bright minds and he's supposedly talking to people and he says, he calls, he calls Bill an idiot savant at on point to someone.
And then another time, he says he's the biggest [BLEEP] in my life. And I said, I have something in common with Bill. I think there are other people who would probably call me that. It's, uh, I thought that, and there was also a nugget in there, I mean it's just it's packed with stuff. But there's one where Eric Mangini shortly after the Spygate scandal unfolded, Bill kind of ghosted Eric Mangini's wife when she tried to say hello to him at an event. And when Mangini found out, he rushed Belichick and was like going to fight him and told Bill to [BLEEP] off had to be held back. I mean, there is some juicy stuff in this book. It is excellent.
PETE THAMEL: The best part about the Brady, Belichick thing, is they legitimately don't like each other. We have too many like fake rivalries right now. Now they respect each other and they were very important, it was a symbiotic relationship. Too many people, especially in the media in Boston have tried to make it like linear. Tom wins, Bill wins. No, they needed each other. And they fueled and feed off each other for a long time. And Belichick made like the economist's gamble.
He looked at the track record for 40 whatever year old quarterbacks had said there is a sample size of 0 effective ones. I think Brady gave them a chance through some of the years of the bad general managing in New England and some of the very limited skill. It's a fun exercise to go back and look at who the starting tailbacks were on all of their Super Bowl teams. It's a whole lot of Antoine Smiths, Corey Dillon from the scrap heap. When you really go back and look, like Brady is the singular force there lifting others up. There weren't a lot of others who went on to, who went on to greener pastures and really developed by themselves there.
CHARLES ROBINSON: I have personally thought that Tom Curran, very respected Patriots beat writer, I always really liked how Tom put it one time we were having a conversation about Brady and Belichick. And I think he's even written this, but you know, Tom kind of said like, hey, look, I think if you want to break down the six Super Bowls, the first three were Bill's, the last three were Tom's.
Like there's no like, like you know, if you want to talk about what went into 'em and how they were accomplished, it's sort of a three and three split. And I felt like that was a really fair way to look at it. What I love about this book and why I think it's so good, is just because it to me humanizes and does a good job of explaining what Pete and I and a lot of writers who get inside the bubble, see every day.
And that is that guess what; these are all human beings and they're all fallible and they, they're, it's just like many work environments in normal everyday life. There are people you do not like. There are people you do not want to work with. Your boss can call you the biggest [BLEEP] in his life, but he needs you. And you know, you have that kind of relationship where it's the two of you being together works well, and that's what keeps things moving.
But, yeah, I think if for people who want to read a great book, I think this is a great book. I think it's worthy of being a "New York Times" bestseller. I don't really ever plug books, but I have no question in my mind that every single person written about in that book added to that book. I just like, there's no question that Bill Belichick and Seth sat down. There's no question in my mind that Tom Brady and Seth sat down. There's no question in my mind that Robert Kraft and Seth sat down, and that everybody knew what everybody else had said about each other going into this.
