jones & Mego: Jones, Mego, and Mike Kadlick argue about free agency and rookie QBs
Episodes five and six 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 Five: Torn:
– “If there’s one game in history I’d change, it’s that game.”
Episode five starts where episode four ends: The Patriots’ lost opportunity at an undefeated season in 2007.
“Losing the 2007 Super Bowl was devastating,” Tom Brady explains. “I was like, ‘What the f—-.’ That year we dominated. We destroyed teams. How did we lose? If there’s one game in history I’d change, it’s that game. But we can't change it.”
Seeing Brady’s candidness about the campaign is cool. What’s even cooler? Belichick’s.
– Bill Belichick puts undefeated regular season into a unique perspective.
You wouldn’t think Bill Belichick would be one to not just look back on the past but relish about it, however that’s exactly what he did regarding New England’s historic 2007 regular season:
“I think back to last season,” he told the Patriots in a 2008 team meeting.” I know that you’ve heard me say, ‘Last year doesn’t mean anything. We don’t care about last year.’ But I hope that you will never forget those 16 wins. I’ve been through 5-11. I’ve been through 7-9. Those are the seasons you wanna forget, believe me. Not the 16-0 ones.”
For him to take a moment and commend his team for their success was something you rarely see, and gives a look at what players and coaches mean when they talk about how different Belichick is inside the building.
– The ‘Patriot-Killer’ notches his first casualty.
Former Chiefs, Texans, Ravens, and Titans safety Bernard Pollard has been dubbed the ‘Patriot Killer’ for his four instances throughout his career where he knocked out a New England player for the remainder of the season.
His first kill? Tom Brady’s knee in Week 1 of 2009.
“I was really prepared to go back and have a great season,” Brady said of his feeling heading into 2009. “We had a lot of the same team so we thought, ‘Okay, this is a redemption year for us.’”
Pollard virtually killed those hopes just 7 minutes and 33 seconds into the campaign.
“I got hit just as my foot was planting, you know my knee got completely crushed. I’ve always said that whenever I got hit, I was the first one up. That was my only way to really display toughness, was when I did get hit I was gonna make sure they didn’t know that it hurt. But the pain just kept going. It was super intense. Doctor ran out and he checked my knee, and I could just tell by the look on his eyes. I knew what it meant.”
Brady would go on to miss the rest of the season with a torn ACL and MCL, but not before attempting to play.
– Brady attemped to play through his knee injury.
“You know you’d watch a lot of quarterbacks ACLs over the years and it’s a season ending injury. But I went into Coach Belichick’s office and said, ‘I wanna play. I’ll fix my ACL at the end of the year. I can just put a brace on it, I’ll tape it, and I’ll just play the whole season.’”
“I remember after he hurt his knee,” Randy Moss recalled. “Tom Brady’s still throwing the football. I was like, ‘Dude, you just tore your knee and you’re out here?!’ I said, ‘Damn dog, are you gonna be okay?’ Next thing you know he goes into the training room to get the thumbs up or the thumbs down. He comes back, slams his playbook, and then he starts cussing, and then he’s like ‘Dude I’m sorry, I’m not gonna be out there with you today,’ something like that. It was hard for him to accept. I ain’t seen him no more after that. That was it.”
Brady left Foxborough to begin his rehab.
– The reason Brady feared missing playing was because of what happened with him and Drew Bledsoe.
The reason Tom Brady was even given the opportunity in the first place to become the greatest quarterback of all time was, of course, because of the 2001 injury to Drew Bledsoe. With Brady now set to miss the entire 2008 season, he feared the worst.
“I don’t think Tommy had missed a game in all the seasons since he started playing,” Robert Kraft explained. “and now he’s done for the season. I think his own vulnerability really kicked in big time because he has observed over the years the modus operandi of our head coach. All players were expendable.”
“Bill was all business,” said Brady’s father, Tom Sr. “He’s cold. He’s calculating. If you’re no good to go on the field, if you’re not capable, you’re no good to the team. You’re just out of sight, out of mind.”
– Patriots turn to Matt Cassel to finish the season… and succeed.
New England being without Tom Brady for the rest of the season had some wondering if the team would look towards an established, veteran quarterback to take the reigns. Instead? They went with 2005 seventh round pick Matt Cassel who, if you haven’t heard, hadn’t started a football game since high school.
“I remember the pressure I felt before I took the field,” Cassel explained of his first start against the New York Jets in Week 2. “...Coach Belichick walks up to me and the goes, ‘Matt, we’re not bringing anybody else in. So don’t worry about all the naysayers, all these people that are going to question what we’re doing at the quarterback position. You’re gonna be fine. Just stay the course.’”
“As a coach, replacing Tom Brady is– that’s a tough one,” Belichick explained. “Tom’s the greatest player of all-time, but you always try to find a way to win. It’s different from year to year. It’s different with different players on the field. But every week I’ve always felt like there's a formula in there somehow that gives you the best opportunity as a team to win.”
New England changed the elements of their offense to not only make it easier on Cassel, but they also allowed him to use his speed and run more, making their system more dynamic.
The Patriots went 11-5, and missed the playoffs only due to a tiebreaker.
– Brady had a hard time with New England’s success.
“Tommy was just very vulnerable at that time,” Brady’s father says. “On the one hand you like to see the Patriots do really well on the other hand you’re sitting on the sideline and the team’s playing – and nobody wants to feel like they’re dispensable.
“From the outside looking in, you realize the show still goes on,” said Brady himself. “I was determined to get back to playing and three days after the surgery I was trying to pretend like I was superhuman.” It caused an infection in his leg, and the doctors wound up having to do another surgery.
“I lost a lot of weight,” he continued. “I was very grey. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn't– I couldn’t move my knee it was so swollen. It was really tough, but I had great people there for me.”
– Alex Guerrero enters the picture.
Tom Brady’s famous (or infamous, depending on how you look at it) body coach Alex Guerrero enters the picture in episode 5. The long-time practitioner of alternative medicine, who has worked with plenty of former Patriots, flew to California to help the quarterback with his ACL recovery.
“Those were some tougher days,” Guerrero said of Brady’s rehab. “...You think about the mortality of your sports career. ‘Alex what if this is it? What if my knee’s never the same?’ He was in his most low state thinking that he’ll never play again.”
– Cassel, Tedy Bruschi put how tough it is to play for Bill Belichick into context.
“If you’re not mentally tough, you can’t play in that program. It’ll destroy you,” Matt Cassel saod of the Patriots’ football operation. “When Belichick would come and do video for the quarterback room, it was all the bad quarterback plays. You can see everybody sort of squirming in their seat like, ‘Oh God I hope he doesn’t show that play.’”
“One time I don’t see a corner blitz,” Cassel continued. “And I get absolutely annihilated… Belichick comes in and he says, ‘Cassel, can we figure out the corner blitz? Because I don’t wanna have to write your mother a letter that says: Dear Mrs. Cassel, We’re sorry to inform you that your son is dead – because he’s a dumbass and didn’t see the corner blitz.’”
“It’s a hard life to live,” former linebacker Tedy Bruschi said with a laugh. “It’s hard, man. And sometimes the young guys just don’t get it. I always tell players you’ve gotta be able to look outside the box and realize why he’s doing it.”
“Have you ever had a wet towel? he continued. “And [have] to wring it out, to get all the water out of it, until it’s dry? I’m the wet towel, and Bill is the hands. I want you to wring the talent out of me any possible way you can. Do it! I’m gonna get upset, I’m gonna get pissed off, but I still know it’s the best for me. And that’s how we're gonna win. And consistently win.”
– 2009 sparks a Patriots reset, with a volatile 2010 Draft class.
After the Patriots’ 2009 season ended in a Wild Card round loss to the Baltimore Ravens, New England knew they needed to re-rool their roster through the NFL Draft.
It was success overall – hitting on longtime safety Devin McCourty in round one and future Hall of Fame tight end Rob Gronkowski in the second round.
They did, however, also draft Aaron Hernandez in round four – the main character of episode six.
“In the fourth round we found this guy that we liked,” said Ernie Adams of the selection. “And there were some off-the-field issues. We thought there’s a degree of risk here but it made sense to take him. But looking in hindsight, of course, we did not understand the full dimensions of what the problem was.”
Make sure to follow Mike on Twitter @mikekadlick, and follow @WEEI for the latest up-to-date Patriots and Boston sports news!
Related
