Any doubts as to how Vice would portray Bill Belichick in the opening episode of its “Dark Side of Football” series were eliminated when Rob Parker and Max Kellerman were two of the first people to appear on-screen. Both talking heads are notorious Patriots haters, spending the last several years blurting out unfounded conspiracy theories and ridiculous hot takes.
Parker wastes little time tearing into Belichick, immediately setting the tone for the tedious hour. “Bill Belichick is a win at all cost kind of guy,” Parker said. “Otherwise, he wouldn’t have cheated, and wouldn’t have been busted like he was in Spygate.”
Minutes later, the deep-voiced narrator muses about Belichick’s — you guessed it — dark side: “Where most coaches would’ve resigned in shame from the scandals, Bill Belichick shrugs them off. Rules are for losers.”
Wow — “rules are for losers.” How sinister and ominous. Too bad the next scene features a cheesy Belichick lookalike sitting in a darkened room scribbling football notes on a faded yellow pad. Vice features these amateur reenactments throughout the episode, killing any chance that somebody might take the show seriously.
To illustrate how Spygate went down, two men are seen standing in the foreground with headsets on, while a darkened figure films them in the shadows.
Most of the episode is centered around commentary from various NFL journalists, ex-players and former coaches: Al Groh, Pepper Johnson, Donte Stallworth, Mike Lynch, Ben Volin, Parker and some guy named Rick Sanchez play starring roles. Together, they describe Belichick as a deceptive and machiavellian figure, who will stop at nothing to win.
Almost every anecdote is meant to highlight Belichick’s apparent callousness. When Bernie Kosar appears to talk about his benching in Cleveland, he talks about how depression and anxiety “took hold” of him.
It’s mentioned that Drew Bledsoe “nearly bled to death” at Mass General when Tom Brady took his place, and ultimately job, against the Jets.
There are maybe two interesting stories in the entire 60 minutes. At the start, Johnson recounts how Belichick once gave him a videotape of 14 plays where he wanted him to use his right arm instead of left arm to try and break into the backfield. Former Colts linebacker D’Qwell Jackson — yes, that D’Qwell Jackson — mentions how Robert Mathis once told him their headsets always get jammed at Gillette Stadium.
Sure enough, Jackson says that’s exactly what happened in the 2015 AFC Championship.
There was another incident in that game, too, and that’s where we get to the laziest part of the show. Understandably, there isn’t much of a market for favorable portrayals of Belichick outside of New England. But Vice’s smear campaign isn’t even interesting. It just rehashes the same tired hits: digging through garbage cans, warm gatorade, Tom Brady’s destroyed phone.
At one point, Parker affirmatively says the Patriots deliberately took the air out of footballs. “The Patriots decided they wanted to make the ball softer for Tom Brady,” he said.
Then the narrator goes in for the full character assassination: “By keeping Belichick as head coach, ownership’s message was clear: Winning was all that mattered.”
There isn’t even a token representation of the other side, such as the fact that footballs lose air in cold weather, or that Spygate was actually about where the Patriots were filming the Jets’ coaches.
Eric Mangini was actually interviewed for the project. It’s too bad he wasn’t asked about the scandal that will forever define him.
Oftentimes, Vice’s efforts to vilify Belichick take the “Dark Side of Football” to a fantastical place. Remember when John Harbaugh was whining about the Patriots lining up ineligible receivers on the line of scrimmage? Well, this is how Vice depicts the perfectly legal maneuver: “The ‘Dark Lord of the NFL’ continued to employ questionable in-game maneuvers, like fielding ineligible players along the line of scrimmage to confuse the defense.”
That stupid videotaping thing with the Bengals from 2019 is highlighted, despite nobody caring about it at all. Meanwhile, Aaron Herandnez isn’t mentioned once. In an attempt to tarnish Belichick’s reputation, Vice didn’t bother to look past Deflategate cliches.
“Dark Side of Football” is a total bore.
