6 rings: Reacting to the Patriots coordinators introductory press conferences
Episodes three and four of The Dynasty: New England Patriots dropped on Apple TV+ on Friday morning, continuing the 10-episode docuseries recapping the greatest run in sports history that took place in Foxborough, Massachusetts.
Here are some rapid reactions, nuggets, and takeaways from Episode Four: Spygate:
– Following losing the 2006 AFC Championship Game to the Colts, the Patriots knew who they needed on offense – and his name was Randy Moss.
After failing to make it to the Super Bowl in two consecutive seasons (‘05, ‘06), the Patriots needed a shake up on offense.
“I look back on that game, the offense, we didn’t get out in front enough,” said Josh McDaniels, New England’s offensive coordinator at the time. “And we couldn’t score enough to beat ‘em.”
He continued: “Right away, going into that offseason, Bill [Belichick] and I, we talked about, ‘We gotta find some new offensive blood. A receiver, who’s an alpa player. Like a guy who’s gonna hang 50 on ya.”
Enter: Randy Moss.
– Randy Moss hung up on Bill Belichick when the Patriots traded for him.
When Bill Belichick called Randy Moss to tell him that the Patriots had traded a fourth round pick to the Raiders for his services, the wide receiver didn’t believe him. In fact, he hung up on him at first, thinking it was a prank call.
“He cut straight to the chase,” Moss explained, after a second call led him to realize it was actually Belichick. “he said, ‘Look man, if you’re not up here by 10 o’ clock tomorrow morning, no trade.’”
“And I’m like, ‘Oh sh–. I just hung up on Bill.”
– Following their first game with Moss on offense, the ‘Spygate’ scandal begins.
After a 38-14 thumping of the Jets where Moss hauled in nine catches for 183 yards and a touchdown, the Patriots’ infamous ‘Spygate’ scandal comes to light.
“It was just your normal Sunday,” Patrick Aramini, a New Jersey state police officer who was stationed at The Meadowlands at the time, recalled of the day. “The Patriots, they’re winning, nothing unusual. But then all of a sudden, the security people from the Jets came to us with this camera. They said, ‘We have an issue. One of the Patriots photographers has been videotaping and spying on our coaches and our plays.’ The camera was confiscated but nobody had any f—- idea what to do. The Patriots were saying, ‘That’s my f—- property.’ The Jets were saying, “You’re f—- spying on us, we don’t want you to have it.’ And I told ‘em, ‘Possession is 9/10ths of the law, I’m in possession of it, it’s staying with me until we decide what we’re going to do with it, and that was the most common sense thing to do.”
Aramini then turned the tape over to the league.
– Robyn Glaser, the Patriots’ new EVP of Football Business & Senior Advisor to the Head Coach, makes an appearance.
Robyn Glaser’s name made headlines last month in Foxborough when the Patriots promoted her to “EVP of Football Business & Senior Advisor to the Head Coach.
A long-time Vice President within the Kraft Group, Glaser makes an appearance in ‘The Dynasty’:
“I remember after the game, it was my first day with the Patriots,” Glaser recalls of her role in Spygate. “I came in, mainly, as a liason to the league. The first piece of paper that I looked at was a letter from Comissioner Goodell essentially saying, ‘We are going to be investigating claims that you have committed some rule violations. Immediately, I knew something very serious was up. The league wanted to send investigators to speak with members of our video crew, Bill of course, and Ernie Adams.”
“Ernie Adams being at the center of Spygate made perfect sense to me,” said former Patriots offensive lineman Damien Woody. “He’s a football savant. Ernie Adams is a genius. There’s not one detail that Ernie Adams would not know about.”
– Ernie Adams sounds incredibly guilty taking about Spygate.
I’m just going to call it like it is with this one. Whether you want to believe Spygate is a big deal or not, Ernie Adams sounds incredibly guilty when talking about it in the documentary.
“Just so you know, on this whole video thing,” Adams said as he pointed at the directors of ‘The Dynasty.’ “The Jets game in 2007. Okay? Just– I, I’m not, I’m not going to re-open it…. Just so you know I mean this is– you’re not going to, I’m not going to. Like could I tell you stories? Yes. Am I going to? No. I’ve got– This is, I. It’s going to the grave with me a little bit.”
“We just sat down in the room,” Adams explained once he seemingly got his bearings. “And I think there were three people from the league and I was there. They were on a fact-finding mission. They were trying to determine what exactly had happened. The biggest thing everybody has to understand is that there have been plenty of teams in the history of the National Football League who have tried to take another team’s signals. You know, that’s why you see a lot of coaches trying to cover their mouth. It’s part of the game. I was figuring other people were filming our signals, I know in some cases they were. It– they were kind of basic counterintelligence.”
– Robert Kraft called Bill Belichick “a real schmuck” to his face following Spygate, but wanted to protect his reputation.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Patriots owner Kraft said of the scandal. “I went right over to Bill and I said, ‘Let me ask you something Bill. How important to us is something like that, on a scale of 1-100?’ And he said to me, ‘One.’ And I said to him, ‘Then you’re a real schmuck.’”
Woah.
“Look, I was pissed with Bill,” Kraft continued. “But when you have division from within, it can be very destructive and dangerous, so I protected Bill. I talked with the lawyers from the NFL office. I said, ‘Look, fine Bill, fine us, do whatever you’ve gotta do but don’t suspend him.’ We tried to protect his reputation.”
Belichick was ultimately fined $500,000 while the team was fined $250,000 and they lost their 2008 first round draft pick.
– Scott Pioli blames Eric Mangini breaking Belichick’s trust for him becoming so closed off, distant.
Eric Mangini was a defensive coach with the Patriots from 2000-2005, winning three Super Bowls with the club before becoming the Jets head coach in 2006.
He not only knew of the team’s practices and strategies, but was the one who ratted them out about the videotaping.
“The unspoken rule is: When you leave the family, you leave the family,” Pioli explained, “You honor the opportunity that was given, you don’t make a mess. You remember how you got your first step in the door, you don’t make a mess.”
He continued: “Bill was very close with Eric, and his very normal human reaction was a feeling of betrayal. And he distanced himself from those of us that were closest to him. Yoiu could feel a certain type of energy in that building. A certain type of anger. A certain type of venegence.”
– That anger? Belichick turned it into an undefeated regular season.
The Patriots, and Belichick used Spygate to their advantage.
“After the whole Spygate thing, we had a lot of emotions for Bill,” Tedy Bruschi explained of the attitude within the Patriots locker room during Spygate. “Hate, love, everything. Everything, but he was ours. And everybody was just going after our coach. Bill would never express how he depised everyting that was said. Like, trying to invalidate everything that we’ve done because of a signal? But this is how we knew [that] he felt it: That offense kept scoring.”
“Bill was just relentless,” Bruschi continued. “We’d be up 20, 30 points, and he’s telling the offense, ‘Do it. Again.’ We’re beating people’s a– so bad that we’re the bad guys. I sorta liked it, though.”
New England’s offense, led by Tom Brady and Randy Moss, scored a then-record 589 points. Brady threw for a then-record 50 touchdown passes, and Moss to this day holds the record for most receiving touchdowns in a season with 23.
They won all 16 of their regular season games, and their first two post season games. And then, Super Bowl XLII happened.
– 18-1.
“Having won three Super Bowls, and now going to another, we’d been blessed and almost a little spoiled,” said owner Robert Kraft with a chuckle. “ thought it was God’s hand at work. But, this time, it was just the reserve. It was the devil at work.”
As we know, the Patriots go in to lose to the Giants in Super Bowl XLII, squandering their chance at the first undefeated season in NFL history.
Though it may be a tough watch for New England fans, the recollection of the game is a mandatory watch.
– Brady still watches the David Tyree helmet catch.
“I was like f– man, how the f– did you do that,” said Brady of the catch David Tyree made on the Giants’ final offensive drive that ultimately won them the game. “That play, I was looking at it the other day, if that ball bounces up we have like five guys here to intercept the ball. It’s one-million-to-one.”
– Randy Moss says Brady called his own play on the final Hail Mary of the game.
“The last play, all we needed was to try for a field goal,” said Moss of the Patriots’ final drive following the Giants taking the lead. “So, Tom told me, ‘Hey Randy we canning that. Run the play, but when I look at you, reverse field.’”
He did just that and after a heave from Brady, the ball was just outside of his reach.
Moss still blames himself.
“Out of all the plays that I’ve made my whole life, that still haunts me. My finger tips touched it. I nipped it.”
– Belichick keeps it simple on the Super Bowl XLII loss.
“The Giants were better than us that day,” said the always tight-lipped Belichick on the loss to the Giants. “They outcoached out, outplayed us, and deserved to win.”
– Patriots players were throwing up on the locker room floor following the loss.
A graphic description by Patriots president Jonathan Kraft following the loss to the Giants explains just how devastating of a defeat it was:
“Following the loss to the Giants that locker room was, by a factor of 10, the most emotional– let me, sorry, let me just start over. Because I’m watching guys throw up and cry on the floor. You know I’ve never seen that. I’ve never, ever, seen that but I wanna figure out how to describe it.”
Make sure to follow Mike on Twitter @mikekadlick, and follow @WEEI for the latest up-to-date Patriots and Boston sports news!
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