April 3, 2025 • 56 mins
Lisa sat down with Jeff Benedict last night and really got into the nitty-gritty of his book The Dynasty. Jeff shared so many stories, and explained how it felt to be a fly on the wall within the Patriots organization! Jeff is a #1 New York Times bestselling author of seventeen non-fiction books, including The Dynasty, the definitive account of the New England Patriots' Tom Brady-Bill Belichick-Robert Kraft era. He is also an Emmy-winning film and television producer.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, Welcome to Lisa's book Club, a podcast where I
interview best selling authors from the New England area, pulling
back the curtain on what it's really like being a
best selling author. They're guilty pleasures, latest projects, and so
much more. Hey, Welcome into Lisa's book Club podcast. I
had the opportunity to sit down with author Jeff Benedict,
who wrote The Dynasty, the Tiger Woods Book, the Lebron Book,
(00:26):
among others. And Jeff was given unprecedented access to the
entire Patriots organization. He literally was a fly on the wall.
He had so many interesting stories to tell us about
that situation. I hope you enjoy it. Jeff Benedict, Welcome,
Thank you. Incredible, incredible, incredible. So you know obviously that
(00:49):
he wrote the Tiger Book, he wrote The Dynasty, he
wrote the Lebron Book, he wrote Little Pink House. He
is a writer for Sports Illustrated. He wrote and among others,
and he also created the Apple TV series the docuseries
The Dynasty, which I'm sure we all saw as well.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
So welcome, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
So I want to tell a little story about how
this all happened because I like to make connections with people,
and I have a wonderful friend. Our children go to
school together. Another mother of my son, Riley, and her
daughter Eva, and she came to one of my book
clubs about six months ago, and after the book club,
(01:36):
she came up to me and she said, Hey, you
know what my a colleague of mine at work at
Ropes and Gray, Jeff Katz. He's really good friends with
Jeff Benedict and he wrote The Dynasty. And I said,
oh my god, I love that. I love that docuseries.
And she goes, can you do think that this would
be something you would want? I said absolutely. So that's
(01:56):
how it happened, very organic, and they're both here tonight.
I don't know where they're sitting, but I want to
thank Maria for suggesting this and Jeff Kats for making
it happen. Truly, I should just.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Well, first of all, I just want to say it's
really great for my wife and I to be here
tonight because we lived here in Boston for ten years.
In fact, I went to law school just around the
corner from here, at New England School of Law, and
that's how I met Jeff Katz because my wife and
I were neighbors with Jeff and his wife, and we
(02:34):
were in law school together. Jeff was at Boston University
Law School and I was at New England. You can
see who's the better was the better lawyer. He's at
Rokes and Gray and I'm doing this. But it's a great,
great friendship that Jeff and I have had that's stretched
back to when we were both in law school in
the nineties. So it's nice to have it come full
(02:56):
circle and be here tonight.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
I totally agree. So let's talk about the book, the project,
the docu series, and I want you to tell the
story of how you actually communicated with Bob Kraft for
the first time.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
First of all, I don't call him Bob.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
He does by Robert.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
He's had three name iterations. Bob was when he bought
the team, and you know, now, of course he's He's
Robert or RKK. But when I and the in the
very early days, which is where I start the book,
he was Bobby. And so if you interview people who
(03:43):
knew Robert Kraft when he was, you know, in his
eighteen nineteen twenty year range, he to those people, he's Bobby,
and they still call him that. But I I started
the process by writing an old fashioned letter. So this
answers your question in the front row about how this started.
I wrote Robert a letter the old fashioned way and
(04:07):
got it delivered to him. I had no connection to
him or the team, and it was months, probably six
months or so later, that he wrote me back, and
he wrote a letter in a letter form. He mailed
it to my house, and I remember being really pleasantly
(04:29):
surprised when I pulled the letter out of the box
that day. I still remember that moment because we were
at the time, we were living on an old gentleman's farm
in Connecticut, and the mailbox was quite a ways from
the house, and I went down and pulled it out.
It was summertime twenty eighteen, so this was like six
months or so after they'd lost the Super Bowl to
(04:51):
the Eagles, and I approached him right after that game,
and that summer he wrote me back, and and not
long after that I got a phone call from his
vice president communications asking me if I would be willing
to come to the stadium to meet with him. And
(05:12):
then we had a series of meetings in his office
in that summer going into training camp.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Right because you were asking him for unprecedented access to
his team, which he really had never given before.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Right, Yeah, I was asking for something. I wanted to do,
something very different than had ever been done before, because
nobody wants to read a book where every page you say, well,
I already knew that, And then he turned the page
and go, I knew that. And pretty soon you're like
fifteen pages in and you're going like, I already know
(05:45):
all this. And so I told him when I went there,
I wasn't going to Tom First or Bill or anybody else.
I was going to him because no one else ever had.
And I had looked up the top one hundred sports
books of all time. Sports Illustrated created a list, and
(06:06):
there wasn't one book in the top one hundred sports
books of all time that was about an owner. And
this book isn't really about the owner. But what I
said to him was I wanted to tell from his
perspective what he built and how he built it. And
I wasn't trying to butter him up. I was genuinely
(06:27):
interested in, like, how do you do that? Like this
team was terrible when you bought it. It was a
laughing stock of the NFL. They were They had the
lowest economic evaluation, and they were terribly in debt. And
(06:47):
when I was talking to him in eighteen, they were
the kings of the sports world, not just football, and
they had the greatest coach and they had the greatest
player on the same payroll. And I was just like,
I want to understand how the machine was built, and
then once you built it, how did you sustain it?
And I think he was genuinely interested in that kind
(07:10):
of conversation. Like I wasn't asking him sensational questions. I
wasn't interested in like sex, lies and videotape. I was
interested in how did I was interested in videotape, but
that was later. But I was really interested in how
this was put together. And I think both he and
his son Jonathan found the conversation compelling because we had
(07:35):
a lot of conversations.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
So you say that you were basically a fly on
the wall for five years within the organization, And when
I think about that, can you explain what that was
like for you being in these rooms, being witnessing these conversations.
How did you deal with that?
Speaker 2 (07:53):
It was really stressful. Actually, it's a lot of anxiety
to go inside and the Patriots organization to me, is
a a pressure packed environment. Anyways, there was so much
when you're in the locker room, and I was in
the locker room a lot in twenty eighteen, my first
(08:14):
year doing this, because that year I really needed to
get an understanding and an acclamation. In the second year
of the project, I didn't need to be in the
locker room that much. But in eighteen, which that year
they went back to the Super Bowl, as you all know,
and they won again for the last time. That year,
the amount of pressure around the team was palpable all
(08:36):
the time, and so I had these This is kind
of a funny story, but I had very strict rules
about what I was supposed to do. And this came
right through the ownership. So I wasn't dealing with the
press office or handlers or anything like that. I was
following the owner around like a puppy dog, and where
(08:59):
he went, I went. So if I remember very early on,
when we were still trying to figure out if we
were going to be able to make this work, one night,
I'll never forget one night the Vice president Communications called
me at home and I didn't have to go yet,
and he said they Robert had asked me where do
(09:20):
you live? And I said, well, I live in Connecticut,
and he just said, well, that's good. That's all he said.
And so later that night his vice president communications called
me home and I said, by the way, you know,
he asked me where I lived, and I said where
I lived, and he said that was good. I said,
(09:41):
what's the what's the relevance of that? And he goes, well,
he said, let me put it this way. He said,
if you lived in Florida, you could never write this book.
Because the way this is going to work is I'm
going to call you up on a Friday night, it
might be ten or eleven o'clock at night, and I'm
going to say you you need to be at the
airfield in Lexington tomorrow morning at six. If you live
(10:04):
in Florida, you can't get there. And so that's why.
And the truth is that happened frequently. An example, when
the synagogue in Pittsburgh got shot up by the anti
Semitic guy who went in and did what he did.
That happened that year that I was my first year
(10:25):
with the team, and that season it just so happened
in the Patriots' schedule. You may remember one of the
last games they played that year was in Pittsburgh, and
so Robert decided at the last minute the game was
on a Sunday. He wanted to go out on Saturday
morning and attend a bar mitzvah and it would be
(10:47):
the first time in the synagogue for all these families
that hadn't been able to be in the synagogue because
of the shooting. And so I got that call on
Friday night. It was very late, and it was the
if you can be at the airfield tomorrow morning, mister
Kraft is going to the synagogue. You'd get an hour
and a half to talk with him on the plane.
(11:08):
So naturally I threw stuff in the bag, I got
a few hours sleep, and I drove up and we
didn't talk a whole lot on that plane ride. But
it was the first time. I've got to do a
lot of really neat things in my job, but I'd
actually never been to a Jewish synagogue before, And think
(11:29):
about that, for your first time, it's that. And I
went with him, and the thing that was amazing was
when we showed up at the synagogue, it was packed,
and no one knew he was there and I followed
him in. We sat down. I put my skull cap on,
(11:51):
and I didn't even I was so ignorant. I didn't
even know how to properly put it on. Like this
whole experience was new, and plus I was trying to
paid really close attention to everything he was doing as
a journalist. And we sat down, and part way through
the the morning, the Rabbi stopped what he was saying
(12:13):
at one point and he said, we have a special
guest with us tonight, and i'd like to invite this morning,
I'd like to invite Robert Kraft to come up and
say a few words. And there was like an audible
gasp in the audience that he was there. And he
came up and he spoke in Hebrew, and then he
(12:33):
spoke in English. And there was a woman, an elderly woman,
sitting in the very front row. It was just like this,
a slightly raised platform and a packed place, and there
was a woman in the front row who was still
bandaged up. She'd been shot multiple times and survived. And
he took the moment. He first of all, he addressed
(12:54):
her personally, and then he talked to the people of Pittsburgh,
and he talked about how in football we have these rivalries.
Patriots and the Steelers have a pretty intense rivalry. And
then he said how it's times like this where we're
not rivals, we're all on the same team. And it
(13:16):
got very emotional in the room for everybody that was
in there, including me, and it was pretty amazing when
he sat down. Just before he sat down, he called
up the young boy who was having his bar mits
for that day. The boy came back up with his parents,
and Robert reached into his coat pocket and pulled out
(13:39):
his owner's tickets to the game and gave them to
the boy. And I have a picture of this kid's
eyes when he was getting those tickets. It was priceless.
When Robert came and sat back down, he's sitting right
next to me, and this was like one of those
moments where it's just really great for the writer. Is
(14:03):
the gentleman sitting behind him leaned forward and tapped him
on the shoulder, and his voice was very shaky, and
he said, it was good of you to be here today,
and then he handed him his skull cap and Robert
looked at it and had the Steelers insignia sewed into
(14:25):
it and he put it on, and I just I
saw a lot of things like that.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Yeah, those moments, and I think, I'm so glad I
read the book because I watched the docu saries before.
But it's his impact. I mean, your book is about
Tom and it's about Bill, but it's really about Robert
and his impact and the fact that if this dynasty
(14:55):
didn't have Robert making sure that Tom and Bill showed
up every day, it would never have happened. And that
was the common theme throughout your entire book.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Yeah, I thought that most there's so many ways that
owners can mess things up, and a lot of owners do,
and there's a reason why a lot of teams perennially
do not win. And what I thought was really interesting
here is Tom has a very healthy ego and you
(15:29):
have to you absolutely have to have that to compete
at the level that he does. So when I say
as a healthy ego, that's not a criticism, that's a plus.
Bill has a very healthy ego. As a coach, his
ego is healthier than Tom's. And the thing is as
(15:55):
the owner, like having two personalities that are that large.
The reason I compared them to Paul McCartney and John
Lennon is because when you have two people that command
a spotlight like that, it's so hard to keep them
on the stage together for any length of time. There's
(16:17):
a reason the Beatles didn't last a decade. And I think, look,
the Rolling Stones have one leader. It's Mick and then
everyone else. Keith is great, but it's Mick. And the
Beatles had two and that just couldn't survive. And the
Patriots had two, and I thought it was fascinating that
to win in this league you have to have a
(16:38):
very dominant coach and a very dominant quarterback. And the
Dynasties all had that. The Packers had it with Starr
and Lombardi, the Steelers had it with Bradshaw and Knowle,
and the forty nine Ers had it with Montana and Walsh.
And none of those lasted more than ten years. This
one was twenty. And I'm saying the first ten it's
(16:59):
the Bill and Tom show, but the second ten would
never have happened without the owner. He really is the
guy behind the curtain. In the second ten years that
gives them the second act and doubles their number of championships.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
What surprised you the most about all of your interactions.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Did you have one sort of just say, you know,
when you watch it's funny because I'm just remembering the
There was one time I was on the sideline a
lot too. And one time my kids were texting me
during the beginning of the game because they were going, Dad,
we'll see you on TV, which is weird because I'm
(17:41):
that's the last thing I want to do is be
on TV. I'm trying to be invisible. But sometimes Tom
was warming up right in front of me. My point
is is that when you watch these games on TV,
or even if you're at the stadium. I know there's
some season ticket holders here, what you see is what
you're allowed to see for hours, and it's only while
(18:03):
Tom has a helmet on, Bill has a headset on
and the lights are shining. But most of the time,
the other twenty one hours in the day or the
other six days of the week, these are human beings
that they have a lot of the same challenges that
all of us have. Family tension, concerns about your children,
(18:29):
stuff with your spouse, like it's all the everyday things
of life. You have a mortgage, you know, all that
stuff and they have that too, And so what's fascinating
to me is how the longer Tom and Bill are together,
the more that stuff starts to grade and wear, and
(18:50):
the working tension in the building. It's just it becomes
part of the lore of the dynasty. And to me,
what may made it so impressive was that despite all
of that, they just kept on plotting along and winning
and winning and winning. And to me, that's what was
(19:12):
the most surprising is their ability to just keep grinding
until finally, after year twenty, Tom said, I've had enough. Yep.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
I was going to ask you a question about if
the Crafts liked the book, but I was talking to
the gentleman sitting in the front. He's a season ticket holder,
and he said that Robert Kraft actually sent the book
to all of the season ticket holders.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
I was very happy about that. That's a lot of
books I thought you were.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
I mean, but that's a testament to all of your
work and to your commitment to telling the right story.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Yeah, look, I thought it was There were two things
that were well, maybe three that were super satisfying for
me just as a writer. It was one when the
Craft family sent books to all season ticket holders. That
was a you know, without saying it just meant a
(20:19):
lot to me. Second thing was, you know when Tom
personally signed my book for me, like he signed my
book and told me how much he liked it, it
meant a lot to me. I don't collect autographs, but
(20:39):
you know, I have a tremendous amount of respect for Tom.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
And well, I'm glad you brought Tom up because we
were upstairs at a different event and you said you
need to ask me the story. So what was your
first interaction with Tom? Can you explain what happened?
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Yes, So when I started the process in twenty eighteen,
I got to go the word go in training camp
heading into the eighteen nineteen season. So I know enough
from doing this job for twenty plus years. I would
not ask active players or coaches for interviews during the season.
(21:17):
So in that first season I did a lot of
the interviews with the former players, the Drew Bledsoe's, the
Teddy bruskis a ton of guys that I need to
interview their wives. I did that during the season. I
didn't interfere with any of the players and coaches while
they were in season. When the season ended, that's when
I put my requests in for all the active guys,
(21:38):
and by the time I did my first interview with Tom,
it wasn't until the start of the next season. So
and that first interview is happening in the stadium, and
whether I get more interviews with Tom hinges on how
this goes. So I was prepared just in case I
(22:01):
didn't get to do it again. I made sure that
the twenty five questions I had were the most essential
things I needed him to talk about, and I worked
really hard to refine and sharpen these questions. And I
went in three hours early that day and wanted to
sit alone and his Tom's the only player on the
(22:23):
payroll that has his own suite for his wife and
family to watch the games, and that's where we're doing
the interview. So I was feeling really, really good until
he showed up. And that's because when he walked in,
I'll never forget this. Here he comes, He's got nobody
with him, no handlers, nothing else. Tom. Yeah, and obviously
(22:46):
I'm by myself and he comes in and the first
thing he says is I've had a really shitty day,
And he kind of said it like that and I
was like, ah, geez, like this it's not the like
way you want to start. And I was trying to
figure out like what to do. And it was Tom's birthday.
(23:09):
I knew that, and so I had brought a birthday card.
It was kind of corny, and I was going to
give it to him at the end of the interview. Yeah,
I was just gonna, you know, I'd written out a
thing to him and all this, and I was just thinking, like,
I gotta do something. And so when he sat down,
I said, I shoved it across the table a little bit.
(23:30):
I said, it's a birthday card, you know, And it
was corny. And he read it and I think he
realized it was corny, and he thought it was funny,
and we just kind of both started cracking up and
and it just broke the ice. And then I had
I had with me some memorile. It's not really memorabilia,
(23:53):
but I, you know, I do a lot of research,
and I had gone back and dug out some of
the very first newspaper stories done here in Boston about
Tom when he first got the job from Drew. And
I thought, look, it's hard I interview people whose lives
are unusually loaded with experiences, Like Tom lives a lifetime.
(24:18):
Every year he meets thousands of people, lots of things happen.
You go into an interview and a guy like me says,
I want to ask you about something that happened in
nineteen ninety five in March, and he's just looking at you, like,
what are you talking about? And so I brought newspaper
clippings with photographs and stuff that were partly designed to
(24:38):
take him back in time and put him in a moment.
And I put those on the table for him, and
he loved it, because Tom loves memorabilia, which I didn't
know at the time, but he loved looking at these newspapers.
And there was these stories about him when he's like
in his second third year and they're going on that
(25:00):
first big run, and it brought out the boy in him.
And there's a lot of boy in Tom. But when
you play in the NFL and everybody is aiming at you,
not just on the field, but there is tremendous jealousy,
(25:22):
it's incredible, and everybody wants to take you down a peg,
and the boy often gets knotted inside that shell. And
when the boy comes out it's really attractive.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
How did Robert Kraft present you to the group, and
was there anyone who was just like, I don't know
about this, Like how was that communicated?
Speaker 2 (25:49):
You know, you can learn a lot from him about
how to deal with people and whether he's dealing with
I mean, that year he was dealing with I'm not
even gonna say his name, but the current president. He
was dealing with Rupert Murdoch. He was dealing with rival owners,
(26:09):
he was dealing with lawyers and agents, he was dealing
with the commissioner. And I got to watch him and
in each instance he's different. It depends one environment he's in.
With me, he was very low key, like I knew
my place.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
So there wasn't any resistance from anyone.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
No, And there also wasn't an big announcement because it
wasn't like that. Okay, it was up to me to
request interviews with people. You know, if I want to
interview Randy Moss, I have to reach out to Randy Moss.
But I was allowed to be in the building. I
had access to basically whatever I asked. When they went
(26:52):
to the Super Bowl, you know, my request there was Frankly,
I don't really care about the game, right, but I
want to be there the week before the game and
I want to go into the rooms and see what's
going on. Like what you're not going to see on
game day is far more interesting for a writer. You
(27:13):
all watch the game. You don't need me to tell
you what happened in the game, and so I don't
even really need to watch the game. And that's how
it was for most Sundays. But being in the locker room,
he never said this is Jeff and he's going to
be in here. I was just told, this is where
you stand. Do not you don't talk to people, no
tape recorders, no notepads, You're just an observer, which was
(27:38):
incredibly valuable.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
But how did you deal with that if you couldn't
bring a notepad in? How did you kind of, oh
start everything?
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Because the stuff that I saw was unforgettable, Like when
Mike Pompeo came. Every week there was, you know, an
incredible array of special guests in the owner's box. When
Mike Pompeo came, that game was kind of a blowout.
And so normally Robert wouldn't go down to the locker
(28:06):
room until the very end, but that game was not close,
so he took you know, Pompeo down early and I
just I go. And when we got down there, no
one's in the locker room because the game is still
going and we're in there early. At least we thought
no one was in the locker room, so we could
(28:27):
go in there and it's quiet, and then all of
a sudden, we're standing there. Robert was explaining things about
the locker room to you know, the secretary, and all
of a sudden, these double doors from the trainer's room
come open. They're like hospital double doors, and it's Rob
Gronkowski comes like bounding through the door because he got
hurt and he'd gone in to get this huge ice
(28:50):
pack wrapped around his lower leg. You could actually see,
like this is why I don't need a notepad. I
can visualize. You could see some blood through the ice
and he had this big pack on and he was
he was shocked to see them and they were surprised
to see him. I don't know if Rob knew who
Pompeio was, to be honest, what does he care, right,
(29:14):
I mean, it's Mike Pompeo. Yeah, but you know, Robert
introduced him and then there was this great conversation about
you know, how you're doing, You're okay and Rob, you know,
of course Rob' said oh, I'll be fine, I'll be fine.
And you know, Roberts says, we need you next week
because we're playing the Colts. You know, we hate the
Colts and they're the Spike eight people, and and you
(29:35):
know Rob was assuring him to be fine. But when
you're seeing stuff like that, like I don't forget. And
then when i'd get back to my computer, which I
had at the stadium, I'd take all the notes down
if it's during the game. And I was in the
Owner's box for pretty much every Sunday. I was allowed
to bring my laptop into the box. So during the game,
(29:56):
I wasn't watching much football at all. I was watching
I had the best seat in the stadium, and I'm
not watching the game. I was watching the people in
the box and everything that was going on. And I
was typing like a madman, of typing what I'm seeing.
Because when I write the story for you, the reader,
(30:17):
I don't want you to have me tell you what
I think. I just want you to see what I see.
And so I'm describing things instead of like opining, I'm describing,
so it gives you the feeling like you're where I am.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
So I'm glad you brought that up because I thought
a big difference between the book and the docuseries was Belichick.
I do, and I know when you called into the
Billion Lisa Show we talked about it a little bit.
So in the book, I feel like you talked about
Belichick like it was a more intimate experience, and then
(30:54):
the docuseries presented him well, he actually was interviewed in
the docuseries, so he was presenting himself. Yes, and maybe
that's where the difference came, because yeah, I really feel
like I walked away from reading your book as being like, Okay,
this this is the way it should have been. This
is he was a coach, he was dealing with things.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
Is that a fair assessment, Well, it's it's definitely different.
Because a writer, I could make somebody look and sound
really bad. I can make somebody look and sound really great.
I can make somebody look and sound sympathetic. I can
(31:36):
make them sound mean a writer. A writer can do
a lot to affect the way the reader perceives the
person on the page. And I always feel like, especially
in a book like this, I go out of my
way to try to portray the people I can. I
(31:59):
want to put them the best slide I can that
also has the right context, and so it doesn't. It's
it's not accurate contextually to just make someone out to
be an a hole because you don't necessarily like the
way they do things if you need them to be
an a hole in a moment, because someone like Ted
(32:21):
Johnson gets a concussion and then coach puts them back
in and he gets a second concussion, you just really
have to kind of describe that as it happened, and
you don't need to weigh in and go by the
way reader, this was stupid. That's not my job. But
here's the thing. When you're doing a documentary, the writer
(32:46):
doesn't have the ability to help you, and so you
just you're you. And Tom came out, and Tom was Tom.
He wore a sweatshirt, he didn't bring anybody with him.
He cried because that's what Tom does. He's emotional, he's
(33:09):
honest and sincere, and he just sort of he's not
an actor. He's not an actor. And Bill comes out,
and Bill was Bill. Bill was Bill no one told
these guys what to do. We did not call Tom
up in advance and say, hey, you should wear a sweatshirt.
(33:30):
You'll look authentic. You should try to smile because people
will like you. We don't do that with anybody. If
someone like Rupert Murdoch's office calls and says, how are
other people in the show dressing, will say, well, Al
Michaels wore a sport coat, so did Lee Steinberg, bon
(33:50):
Jovi wore a leather jacket. I mean it's Rupert. He
can wear whatever he wants. That's what we told everybody.
And Bill came in dressed the way Bill doesn't dress,
and a suit and tie.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
He looks so uncomfortable.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
If Bill had come in with a hoodie and the
sleeves cut to me, he would have just been more
comfortable and Ben himself. And there was tension in that interview.
It was palpable in the room for everybody, And unfortunately
there's not a lot. This is not a movie, by
(34:27):
the way, where a documentary is literally what it says.
You sit in front of the camera, we aim it
at you, We turn the light on and we ask
you questions and you answer. It's not like acting with
makeup and fifty cuts and we can edit and do
all this stuff. It's just it's what you say. Randy
Moss was hilarious. I mean, he imitates Forrest Gump. He's
(34:49):
like Tom Hanks running down the field, you know, and
he's even got the accent going because that's how Randy is.
I actually thought that one of the best things about
the documentary is a rare instance where everybody got to
see all of these people as they are totally true.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
I want to ask you about Tom. One more thing
about Tom Brady. He went through spy Gate, he went
through to flate Gate, he went through you know, marital
girlfriend scandals, the Alex Guerrero piece of this whole thing.
Why do you think he was always able to take
the high road because he was, like, like you said,
(35:34):
he was always a target.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
Yeah, I've had the you know. To me, I consider
it like a huge privilege of doing Tom and Lebron
back to back because although they're very different guys, one
thing in common is they put up with more shit
(35:58):
than when you get to the stage they're at in
their profession. There's so much crap that you have to
put up with and deal with and it's just it's
exhausting that part of it because it's got nothing to
do with the physical part of being an athlete. It's
(36:19):
the mental part that actually is way more tiring and
draining on people like that And what so impressed me
about Tom Even in private when we're doing these interviews,
it's just him and I. I mean, I have tape
recorders on the table, so I'm capturing. But the rule
that I have with as I said with Tom, like,
(36:40):
any time you want me to turn off the recorder,
just tell me and I'll shut it off and I
won't ask you why. Right, it doesn't matter if you
just don't want to, it's pause or off. Tom was
like that in private too, Like that's what's really interesting.
There's people, as you all know who in public or
(37:02):
in the office or when you're next to them, they
are they're nice, and when you're not there, they're different.
And I'm just saying that Tom was consistent when I
was alone with him, and I would ask him about
certain players, not because I was trying to get him
to to dish on people. On the contrary, I'm just
(37:24):
trying to I'm just doing my job to understand some
of the dynamics of these relationships. I'm just telling you
that Tom always naturally went out of his way to say, look,
you know, let me let me explain this from Bill's perspective, right,
let me let me Yes, we had our disagreements, but
(37:47):
he's he's mature enough to say, look, I understand it
from Bill's point of view. Doesn't mean I like it,
and it doesn't mean that I necessarily agree with it.
But the fact that he has self awareness to say
I understand that he has a point of view, and
there's a reason that he has the point of view.
(38:08):
Most people can't do that, right. Tom could do that,
and he was to me, that's incredibly mature and very
unusual usual. Yeah. It made me like him, you know,
all the more because I just know it's hard to
(38:30):
do that.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
Can you explain the Alex Guerrero relationship?
Speaker 2 (38:35):
Sure?
Speaker 1 (38:36):
Did you witness?
Speaker 2 (38:39):
So Alex is someone that Tom was fortunate to meet,
because he never would have met him if it wasn't
for Willie mcguinnis. Tom was a few years into his
career in New England. Willie McGinnis was a veteran. At
that point, Willie had had some injuries. Willie's from southern
(38:59):
California from you know, gone to USC. He grew up
in LA and Alex Guerrero worked with some of the
PAC twelve schools in southern California, and that's how Willie
McGinnis knew him. And he had helped Willie work through
some injuries. And when Tom got to the point where
he couldn't throw because he had so much pain in
(39:20):
his elbow and he's in his twenties, and Willie basically said,
I know a guy you should talk to, and they
brought him out and Tom worked with him a little
and it worked, and so he started working with him
more and more. And the thing is, I think here's
where I know Alex. Alex worked on me because when
(39:42):
I was working on the book, I hurt my back
and Tom could see in one of my interviews I
was in so much pain that it was hard for
me to sit down and he literally pulled out his
cell phone. He's like, Alex, I got some guy, you
got to talk. You got to help Jeff. So I
love that. Yeah, And did it help? Yeah? It did.
I mean it actually helped me as a writer too.
(40:04):
And the reason I say that is because there was
no better inside information than to have your body being manipulated,
physically manipulated by the team that worked on Tom, and
so it helped me understand what he meant to Tom.
(40:25):
The way I would look at it is this is like,
it doesn't really matter what anybody else thinks about Alex Guerrero.
It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what a surgeon thinks,
it doesn't matter what anybody thinks. The only thing that
matters is what Tom thinks. And I'm not saying that
(40:47):
as a way to discount Alex. On the contrary, I'm
not doing that because I know what happened to me.
I'm saying that Tom found Lebron found someone, Tiger found someone.
These guys find people because they're at a place in
(41:12):
their profession where no one else is, and they do
things to remain there that other people don't do. There
are a bunch of quarterbacks in the NFL right now
that are exceptionally good quarterbacks, and I would be very
and I don't make predictions. I'm not a sports writer,
but I'm very comfortable saying none of them, none of
(41:38):
them are going to play for twenty three years, and
none of them if they managed to survive for twenty
three years, would be running around the way Tom was
in year twenty three, where he was in the top
three categories statistically of all the quarterbacks leave the league
(42:01):
in his twenty third year. No one else is going
to do that. And I could say at the same time,
there's no player in the NBA right now, not Luka Doncich,
not Djokich, not Steph Curry that can do what Lebron
has done. That man is running around right now as
a forty year old, and he's he's doing things that
(42:22):
he should not be able to do physically. And Tom
was like that, and Alex Guerrero had a big part.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
In that, right And I just think as fans like
we could never understand if it was working for Tom,
why was it such a big deal to Bill to
get him out of there.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
So this is where that perspective is important. When you're
a coach and you have fifty three players, and in
the NFL, fifty three players have pain every week. Because
pain is I'm not saying fifty three players are injured,
but pain is part of playing in the NFL. It's
part of the game. So these guys are with the
(43:04):
training staff on a daily basis. It's like the military
in the sense that there's a protocol, there's a system,
and when you have one guy who has his own system,
and suddenly other guys Julian Edelman, Rob Gronkowski start going
to that guy because that guy is helping them heal
(43:29):
faster and better than the training staff. Suddenly the training
staff start to feel like they're losing control and their
system is in competition, and it created a friction in
the locker room. I'm not saying I agree with it
or don't. I actually understand it my view on the
(43:49):
whole thing. And this is easy for me because I'm
the journalist. I'm not the coach, I'm not the owner,
and I'm not the quarterback. But I'm sitting there going
and I have the benefit of hindsight. But I'm coming
in at the end of the dynasty. This thing's winding down,
and I'm looking at Tom and I'm saying, Holy mackerel,
this guy is in his nineteenth year. Twenty eighteen was
(44:13):
year nineteen for him, year nineteen with the same team
and the same coach. And I'm thinking to myself, if
I run a company, this guy has shown everybody. He's
an outlier. He is not like anyone else who's ever
had this job. And there's been a lot of guys
(44:34):
that have had this job. Joe Montana, John Elway, Dan Marino,
they're all in the Hall of Fame. None of them
have been able to do what this guy's done. This
is one of those times where you do what you're
not used to doing, which is there's a different set
(44:55):
of rules for that guy, and he's earned that because
he's he's when you try to take a guy like that.
I learned this from Mike Krzyzewsky. Mike told me when
I was working on the Lebron book, I'll never forget this.
Mike said, there's certain players as a coach because he
coached the Olympic team, so he had Kobe and Lebron,
(45:18):
and he said, when I had Kobe and Lebron on
my team, he said, I changed the rules for those
two guys. And the first rule was neither of them
were going to have a position. Think about that, as
a coach, you have five players with positions, but you
have one guy you have no position. You don't have
a position. Because Kobe Bryant was so good the coach
(45:42):
was just like it would be actually bad coaching if
I were to try to force Kobe into a position.
He was too good for that, and so was Lebron
and Tom is that when Tom's on the field, he
oh so many things. He's done this for so long,
(46:03):
and his conditioning was so insanely unusual, the sleeping patterns,
the food, the stuff that he was doing with his body.
I think Bill had never coached a player like that,
and you know what, neither did anyone else. So that's
(46:24):
not a knock on Bill. Bill Parcells never coached a
player like that. No one had, and I think that
it was hard because it's hard to have someone like that.
Speaker 1 (46:33):
Like.
Speaker 2 (46:33):
The benefit is you keep getting hardware every year. The
hard part is he's not like anybody else, and your
whole system is around merit and everyone gets treated the
same and there's no stars and all that. It's hard
to say you have no stars when the biggest star
in the game is on.
Speaker 1 (46:52):
Your team, right can we I want to ask what
your take is on Bill going to UNC and what
do you think is going to happen? You know with
n I L And I mean, do you think he'll
create a great program there.
Speaker 2 (47:18):
That's a little outside the scope of my book, and
I'm not saying that to I'm not going to dart
the question. I'm just saying obviously I didn't write about
that because that happened after. But yeah, I'm just what
I would say is this Bill. There's only one coach
in the history of professional football who's won more games
(47:40):
as a coach than Bill, and Bill is this close
to him, and I think rightfully so it was enormously
important for him to break that record. And he really
(48:00):
only needed to coach at most two more seasons. And
there are no other records for Bill but that one,
but that one actually really matters. And I think it's interesting,
I'll use that word that when Bill left New England,
(48:25):
Tom and Bill both leave New England, which in a
way is kind of heartbreaking for New England fans. I'm
a New England fan, so it's sad when legends leave
Bobby or Larry Bird. It's like it's a bummer when
it ends, and you wonder, is there ever going to
be another hockey player like Bobby Orr or like Larry Bird,
(48:45):
or like Tom Brady. And you know, it's tough when
Tom left We all know what happened when Bill left.
A lot of people assumed that he would go somewhere else,
and there were a lot of job openings that year
(49:07):
and nobody hired. And then came a second season and
nobody hired. And I just think that, you know, college
football is not the NFL. It's not. And North Carolina
is not Ohio State and Michigan. It's North Carolina. And
(49:27):
so the college football game is so different. These are
not men. These are boys. They're literally coming right out
of high school. They're boys. Some of them are still
technically minors when they get there, and they are not
used to or equipped to perform and be coached the
(49:53):
way men are coached in the NFL. It's different. When
you're in the NFL, you have a contract, it's a job.
Most of these guys have a family, and you know
what it means to go to work every day and
put your uniform on. In college, now you can jump
from team to team every year. The portal is there,
(50:14):
there's nil, there's money and all these other crazy things.
It's a new universe for Bill. Yes, it's football, but
it's not the NFL. And so look, I know as
much as you and the audience know about how that's
all going to work out. All I'm saying is I
don't think that this was the plan.
Speaker 1 (50:35):
That's fair. I usually end our little discussion here with
the DM from someone who could not be here, and
overwhelmingly the dms came in. What happened with Malcolm Butler?
What happened with Malcolm Butler?
Speaker 2 (50:51):
Oh, what happened?
Speaker 1 (50:55):
They keep saying it was a football decision. That's what
you're say in the book, like it's a football Well, in.
Speaker 2 (51:01):
The book, I said what Bill said, right, And in
the documentary we were able to learn more. And that's
because sometimes the benefit of doing a documentary after a book,
which doesn't happen very often, but we did it with
Tiger and we did it here, is once the book
(51:22):
comes out, you actually, if you treat people properly in
the book, you actually garner more trust because you didn't
abuse relationships, you didn't abuse people's trust. You can actually
go deeper if you get to do another take another pass.
And the documentary afforded that opportunity, and people did go deeper.
(51:45):
And one subject, because so many people are curious about
the Malcolm Butler situation and Malcolm Butler agreed to be
interviewed on camera, and we asked Malcolm that question seven
different ways because there are a variety of rumors. And
I say rumors because if there's seven stories about what happened,
(52:09):
at least six of them aren't true, at least six
of them, and maybe all seven. So we asked them
all the different stories, and the bottom line is this.
No player, not Tom, not Devin mccordy, the team captain
on defense, not one player had a clue that Malcolm
(52:30):
wasn't going to play, and most of them didn't realize it.
On the defensive side, they didn't realize it till they
ran out on the field for the first series and
he wasn't there. They had no idea that he wasn't playing.
That's a fact. Okay, that's not supposition, that's not a rumor.
(52:51):
That's a baseline fact. So if you start with that,
think about it from think about who we're talking about.
We're talking about the most prepared coach in the NFL.
That's one of Bill's great assets, qualities, whatever you want
to call it. It's an accolade. He out prepares everybody,
and his team has no surprises well, that was a
(53:16):
huge surprise in the biggest game of their life. So
that tells me something as a journalist, that something was
going on that's not just a football decision, because if
it was a football decision, you tell the defense the
football decision and why this guy's playing, and you practice
(53:39):
and prepare for that. So if you think about all
the rumors you have heard about what happened that week,
none of that adds up, and none of it's true.
He was smoking pot, he was out late, he missed
the team meeting, he missed the team playing. All of
that just set it aside because none of that is accurate.
(54:04):
It's just not accurate. So then you get to, well,
then what else is there? And where I'm safe saying
is that the thing that was behind it was not
football related. It was more personal. And sometimes I'm not
(54:25):
comfortable telling you what it is because I can't prove
that it was that, and I would never say something
that I can't prove. And so I'm not going to
sit here and spew rumors and things that are that
are not real. It's not it's not fair to anybody,
it's not fair to Malcolm and and so I would
(54:45):
just say that. What's really unfortunate, if you think about it,
is this team won the Super Bowl the year before
the greatest comeback ever twenty eight to three. They won
the Super Bowl after when they beat the Rams. The
best of those three teams was the team that lost
to the Eagles. That was the best of those three seasons.
(55:10):
And that game against Eagles was Tom's best performance statistically.
I mean, nothing beats what he did against Atlanta, but
statistically what Tom did against Philadelphia was the best game
he ever played of his nine trips to the Super Bowl.
And they lost, and they lost because they could not
(55:34):
stop the Eagles on defense. And so to me, what's
you know, I get close to the border of being
less a journalist than when I look at it just
as a fan. It's heartbreaking that we didn't get three
in a row because we should have. And I think
the players know that. I think Bill knows that, the
(55:56):
owner knows that, the fans know it, and he Eagles
know it exactly.
Speaker 1 (56:02):
All right, Well, this is really spectacular. I could talk
to you for another hour. Next up we have author
Gregory Maguire, who wrote Wicked, and his new book Elfie,
which is the prequel He will be doing My book
Club May twenty first at Joss and Maine. The link
to register is up and live, so get in because
(56:23):
it will sell out. Thanks so much for listening.
Hey, Welcome to Lisa's book Club, a podcast where I
interview best selling authors from the New England area, pulling
back the curtain on what it's really like being a
best selling author. They're guilty pleasures, latest projects, and so
much more. Hey, Welcome into Lisa's book Club podcast. I
had the opportunity to sit down with author Jeff Benedict,
who wrote The Dynasty, the Tiger Woods Book, the Lebron Book,
(00:26):
among others. And Jeff was given unprecedented access to the
entire Patriots organization. He literally was a fly on the wall.
He had so many interesting stories to tell us about
that situation. I hope you enjoy it. Jeff Benedict, Welcome,
Thank you. Incredible, incredible, incredible. So you know obviously that
(00:49):
he wrote the Tiger Book, he wrote The Dynasty, he
wrote the Lebron Book, he wrote Little Pink House. He
is a writer for Sports Illustrated. He wrote and among others,
and he also created the Apple TV series the docuseries
The Dynasty, which I'm sure we all saw as well.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
So welcome, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
So I want to tell a little story about how
this all happened because I like to make connections with people,
and I have a wonderful friend. Our children go to
school together. Another mother of my son, Riley, and her
daughter Eva, and she came to one of my book
clubs about six months ago, and after the book club,
(01:36):
she came up to me and she said, Hey, you
know what my a colleague of mine at work at
Ropes and Gray, Jeff Katz. He's really good friends with
Jeff Benedict and he wrote The Dynasty. And I said,
oh my god, I love that. I love that docuseries.
And she goes, can you do think that this would
be something you would want? I said absolutely. So that's
(01:56):
how it happened, very organic, and they're both here tonight.
I don't know where they're sitting, but I want to
thank Maria for suggesting this and Jeff Kats for making
it happen. Truly, I should just.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Well, first of all, I just want to say it's
really great for my wife and I to be here
tonight because we lived here in Boston for ten years.
In fact, I went to law school just around the
corner from here, at New England School of Law, and
that's how I met Jeff Katz because my wife and
I were neighbors with Jeff and his wife, and we
(02:34):
were in law school together. Jeff was at Boston University
Law School and I was at New England. You can
see who's the better was the better lawyer. He's at
Rokes and Gray and I'm doing this. But it's a great,
great friendship that Jeff and I have had that's stretched
back to when we were both in law school in
the nineties. So it's nice to have it come full
(02:56):
circle and be here tonight.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
I totally agree. So let's talk about the book, the project,
the docu series, and I want you to tell the
story of how you actually communicated with Bob Kraft for
the first time.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
First of all, I don't call him Bob.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
He does by Robert.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
He's had three name iterations. Bob was when he bought
the team, and you know, now, of course he's He's
Robert or RKK. But when I and the in the
very early days, which is where I start the book,
he was Bobby. And so if you interview people who
(03:43):
knew Robert Kraft when he was, you know, in his
eighteen nineteen twenty year range, he to those people, he's Bobby,
and they still call him that. But I I started
the process by writing an old fashioned letter. So this
answers your question in the front row about how this started.
I wrote Robert a letter the old fashioned way and
(04:07):
got it delivered to him. I had no connection to
him or the team, and it was months, probably six
months or so later, that he wrote me back, and
he wrote a letter in a letter form. He mailed
it to my house, and I remember being really pleasantly
(04:29):
surprised when I pulled the letter out of the box
that day. I still remember that moment because we were
at the time, we were living on an old gentleman's farm
in Connecticut, and the mailbox was quite a ways from
the house, and I went down and pulled it out.
It was summertime twenty eighteen, so this was like six
months or so after they'd lost the Super Bowl to
(04:51):
the Eagles, and I approached him right after that game,
and that summer he wrote me back, and and not
long after that I got a phone call from his
vice president communications asking me if I would be willing
to come to the stadium to meet with him. And
(05:12):
then we had a series of meetings in his office
in that summer going into training camp.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Right because you were asking him for unprecedented access to
his team, which he really had never given before.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Right, Yeah, I was asking for something. I wanted to do,
something very different than had ever been done before, because
nobody wants to read a book where every page you say, well,
I already knew that, And then he turned the page
and go, I knew that. And pretty soon you're like
fifteen pages in and you're going like, I already know
(05:45):
all this. And so I told him when I went there,
I wasn't going to Tom First or Bill or anybody else.
I was going to him because no one else ever had.
And I had looked up the top one hundred sports
books of all time. Sports Illustrated created a list, and
(06:06):
there wasn't one book in the top one hundred sports
books of all time that was about an owner. And
this book isn't really about the owner. But what I
said to him was I wanted to tell from his
perspective what he built and how he built it. And
I wasn't trying to butter him up. I was genuinely
(06:27):
interested in, like, how do you do that? Like this
team was terrible when you bought it. It was a
laughing stock of the NFL. They were They had the
lowest economic evaluation, and they were terribly in debt. And
(06:47):
when I was talking to him in eighteen, they were
the kings of the sports world, not just football, and
they had the greatest coach and they had the greatest
player on the same payroll. And I was just like,
I want to understand how the machine was built, and
then once you built it, how did you sustain it?
And I think he was genuinely interested in that kind
(07:10):
of conversation. Like I wasn't asking him sensational questions. I
wasn't interested in like sex, lies and videotape. I was
interested in how did I was interested in videotape, but
that was later. But I was really interested in how
this was put together. And I think both he and
his son Jonathan found the conversation compelling because we had
(07:35):
a lot of conversations.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
So you say that you were basically a fly on
the wall for five years within the organization, And when
I think about that, can you explain what that was
like for you being in these rooms, being witnessing these conversations.
How did you deal with that?
Speaker 2 (07:53):
It was really stressful. Actually, it's a lot of anxiety
to go inside and the Patriots organization to me, is
a a pressure packed environment. Anyways, there was so much
when you're in the locker room, and I was in
the locker room a lot in twenty eighteen, my first
(08:14):
year doing this, because that year I really needed to
get an understanding and an acclamation. In the second year
of the project, I didn't need to be in the
locker room that much. But in eighteen, which that year
they went back to the Super Bowl, as you all know,
and they won again for the last time. That year,
the amount of pressure around the team was palpable all
(08:36):
the time, and so I had these This is kind
of a funny story, but I had very strict rules
about what I was supposed to do. And this came
right through the ownership. So I wasn't dealing with the
press office or handlers or anything like that. I was
following the owner around like a puppy dog, and where
(08:59):
he went, I went. So if I remember very early on,
when we were still trying to figure out if we
were going to be able to make this work, one night,
I'll never forget one night the Vice president Communications called
me at home and I didn't have to go yet,
and he said they Robert had asked me where do
(09:20):
you live? And I said, well, I live in Connecticut,
and he just said, well, that's good. That's all he said.
And so later that night his vice president communications called
me home and I said, by the way, you know,
he asked me where I lived, and I said where
I lived, and he said that was good. I said,
(09:41):
what's the what's the relevance of that? And he goes, well,
he said, let me put it this way. He said,
if you lived in Florida, you could never write this book.
Because the way this is going to work is I'm
going to call you up on a Friday night, it
might be ten or eleven o'clock at night, and I'm
going to say you you need to be at the
airfield in Lexington tomorrow morning at six. If you live
(10:04):
in Florida, you can't get there. And so that's why.
And the truth is that happened frequently. An example, when
the synagogue in Pittsburgh got shot up by the anti
Semitic guy who went in and did what he did.
That happened that year that I was my first year
(10:25):
with the team, and that season it just so happened
in the Patriots' schedule. You may remember one of the
last games they played that year was in Pittsburgh, and
so Robert decided at the last minute the game was
on a Sunday. He wanted to go out on Saturday
morning and attend a bar mitzvah and it would be
(10:47):
the first time in the synagogue for all these families
that hadn't been able to be in the synagogue because
of the shooting. And so I got that call on
Friday night. It was very late, and it was the
if you can be at the airfield tomorrow morning, mister
Kraft is going to the synagogue. You'd get an hour
and a half to talk with him on the plane.
(11:08):
So naturally I threw stuff in the bag, I got
a few hours sleep, and I drove up and we
didn't talk a whole lot on that plane ride. But
it was the first time. I've got to do a
lot of really neat things in my job, but I'd
actually never been to a Jewish synagogue before, And think
(11:29):
about that, for your first time, it's that. And I
went with him, and the thing that was amazing was
when we showed up at the synagogue, it was packed,
and no one knew he was there and I followed
him in. We sat down. I put my skull cap on,
(11:51):
and I didn't even I was so ignorant. I didn't
even know how to properly put it on. Like this
whole experience was new, and plus I was trying to
paid really close attention to everything he was doing as
a journalist. And we sat down, and part way through
the the morning, the Rabbi stopped what he was saying
(12:13):
at one point and he said, we have a special
guest with us tonight, and i'd like to invite this morning,
I'd like to invite Robert Kraft to come up and
say a few words. And there was like an audible
gasp in the audience that he was there. And he
came up and he spoke in Hebrew, and then he
(12:33):
spoke in English. And there was a woman, an elderly woman,
sitting in the very front row. It was just like this,
a slightly raised platform and a packed place, and there
was a woman in the front row who was still
bandaged up. She'd been shot multiple times and survived. And
he took the moment. He first of all, he addressed
(12:54):
her personally, and then he talked to the people of Pittsburgh,
and he talked about how in football we have these rivalries.
Patriots and the Steelers have a pretty intense rivalry. And
then he said how it's times like this where we're
not rivals, we're all on the same team. And it
(13:16):
got very emotional in the room for everybody that was
in there, including me, and it was pretty amazing when
he sat down. Just before he sat down, he called
up the young boy who was having his bar mits
for that day. The boy came back up with his parents,
and Robert reached into his coat pocket and pulled out
(13:39):
his owner's tickets to the game and gave them to
the boy. And I have a picture of this kid's
eyes when he was getting those tickets. It was priceless.
When Robert came and sat back down, he's sitting right
next to me, and this was like one of those
moments where it's just really great for the writer. Is
(14:03):
the gentleman sitting behind him leaned forward and tapped him
on the shoulder, and his voice was very shaky, and
he said, it was good of you to be here today,
and then he handed him his skull cap and Robert
looked at it and had the Steelers insignia sewed into
(14:25):
it and he put it on, and I just I
saw a lot of things like that.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Yeah, those moments, and I think, I'm so glad I
read the book because I watched the docu saries before.
But it's his impact. I mean, your book is about
Tom and it's about Bill, but it's really about Robert
and his impact and the fact that if this dynasty
(14:55):
didn't have Robert making sure that Tom and Bill showed
up every day, it would never have happened. And that
was the common theme throughout your entire book.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Yeah, I thought that most there's so many ways that
owners can mess things up, and a lot of owners do,
and there's a reason why a lot of teams perennially
do not win. And what I thought was really interesting
here is Tom has a very healthy ego and you
(15:29):
have to you absolutely have to have that to compete
at the level that he does. So when I say
as a healthy ego, that's not a criticism, that's a plus.
Bill has a very healthy ego. As a coach, his
ego is healthier than Tom's. And the thing is as
(15:55):
the owner, like having two personalities that are that large.
The reason I compared them to Paul McCartney and John
Lennon is because when you have two people that command
a spotlight like that, it's so hard to keep them
on the stage together for any length of time. There's
(16:17):
a reason the Beatles didn't last a decade. And I think, look,
the Rolling Stones have one leader. It's Mick and then
everyone else. Keith is great, but it's Mick. And the
Beatles had two and that just couldn't survive. And the
Patriots had two, and I thought it was fascinating that
to win in this league you have to have a
(16:38):
very dominant coach and a very dominant quarterback. And the
Dynasties all had that. The Packers had it with Starr
and Lombardi, the Steelers had it with Bradshaw and Knowle,
and the forty nine Ers had it with Montana and Walsh.
And none of those lasted more than ten years. This
one was twenty. And I'm saying the first ten it's
(16:59):
the Bill and Tom show, but the second ten would
never have happened without the owner. He really is the
guy behind the curtain. In the second ten years that
gives them the second act and doubles their number of championships.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
What surprised you the most about all of your interactions.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Did you have one sort of just say, you know,
when you watch it's funny because I'm just remembering the
There was one time I was on the sideline a
lot too. And one time my kids were texting me
during the beginning of the game because they were going, Dad,
we'll see you on TV, which is weird because I'm
(17:41):
that's the last thing I want to do is be
on TV. I'm trying to be invisible. But sometimes Tom
was warming up right in front of me. My point
is is that when you watch these games on TV,
or even if you're at the stadium. I know there's
some season ticket holders here, what you see is what
you're allowed to see for hours, and it's only while
(18:03):
Tom has a helmet on, Bill has a headset on
and the lights are shining. But most of the time,
the other twenty one hours in the day or the
other six days of the week, these are human beings
that they have a lot of the same challenges that
all of us have. Family tension, concerns about your children,
(18:29):
stuff with your spouse, like it's all the everyday things
of life. You have a mortgage, you know, all that
stuff and they have that too, And so what's fascinating
to me is how the longer Tom and Bill are together,
the more that stuff starts to grade and wear, and
(18:50):
the working tension in the building. It's just it becomes
part of the lore of the dynasty. And to me,
what may made it so impressive was that despite all
of that, they just kept on plotting along and winning
and winning and winning. And to me, that's what was
(19:12):
the most surprising is their ability to just keep grinding
until finally, after year twenty, Tom said, I've had enough. Yep.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
I was going to ask you a question about if
the Crafts liked the book, but I was talking to
the gentleman sitting in the front. He's a season ticket holder,
and he said that Robert Kraft actually sent the book
to all of the season ticket holders.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
I was very happy about that. That's a lot of
books I thought you were.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
I mean, but that's a testament to all of your
work and to your commitment to telling the right story.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Yeah, look, I thought it was There were two things
that were well, maybe three that were super satisfying for
me just as a writer. It was one when the
Craft family sent books to all season ticket holders. That
was a you know, without saying it just meant a
(20:19):
lot to me. Second thing was, you know when Tom
personally signed my book for me, like he signed my
book and told me how much he liked it, it
meant a lot to me. I don't collect autographs, but
(20:39):
you know, I have a tremendous amount of respect for Tom.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
And well, I'm glad you brought Tom up because we
were upstairs at a different event and you said you
need to ask me the story. So what was your
first interaction with Tom? Can you explain what happened?
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Yes, So when I started the process in twenty eighteen,
I got to go the word go in training camp
heading into the eighteen nineteen season. So I know enough
from doing this job for twenty plus years. I would
not ask active players or coaches for interviews during the season.
(21:17):
So in that first season I did a lot of
the interviews with the former players, the Drew Bledsoe's, the
Teddy bruskis a ton of guys that I need to
interview their wives. I did that during the season. I
didn't interfere with any of the players and coaches while
they were in season. When the season ended, that's when
I put my requests in for all the active guys,
(21:38):
and by the time I did my first interview with Tom,
it wasn't until the start of the next season. So
and that first interview is happening in the stadium, and
whether I get more interviews with Tom hinges on how
this goes. So I was prepared just in case I
(22:01):
didn't get to do it again. I made sure that
the twenty five questions I had were the most essential
things I needed him to talk about, and I worked
really hard to refine and sharpen these questions. And I
went in three hours early that day and wanted to
sit alone and his Tom's the only player on the
(22:23):
payroll that has his own suite for his wife and
family to watch the games, and that's where we're doing
the interview. So I was feeling really, really good until
he showed up. And that's because when he walked in,
I'll never forget this. Here he comes, He's got nobody
with him, no handlers, nothing else. Tom. Yeah, and obviously
(22:46):
I'm by myself and he comes in and the first
thing he says is I've had a really shitty day,
And he kind of said it like that and I
was like, ah, geez, like this it's not the like
way you want to start. And I was trying to
figure out like what to do. And it was Tom's birthday.
(23:09):
I knew that, and so I had brought a birthday card.
It was kind of corny, and I was going to
give it to him at the end of the interview. Yeah,
I was just gonna, you know, I'd written out a
thing to him and all this, and I was just thinking, like,
I gotta do something. And so when he sat down,
I said, I shoved it across the table a little bit.
(23:30):
I said, it's a birthday card, you know, And it
was corny. And he read it and I think he
realized it was corny, and he thought it was funny,
and we just kind of both started cracking up and
and it just broke the ice. And then I had
I had with me some memorile. It's not really memorabilia,
(23:53):
but I, you know, I do a lot of research,
and I had gone back and dug out some of
the very first newspaper stories done here in Boston about
Tom when he first got the job from Drew. And
I thought, look, it's hard I interview people whose lives
are unusually loaded with experiences, Like Tom lives a lifetime.
(24:18):
Every year he meets thousands of people, lots of things happen.
You go into an interview and a guy like me says,
I want to ask you about something that happened in
nineteen ninety five in March, and he's just looking at you, like,
what are you talking about? And so I brought newspaper
clippings with photographs and stuff that were partly designed to
(24:38):
take him back in time and put him in a moment.
And I put those on the table for him, and
he loved it, because Tom loves memorabilia, which I didn't
know at the time, but he loved looking at these newspapers.
And there was these stories about him when he's like
in his second third year and they're going on that
(25:00):
first big run, and it brought out the boy in him.
And there's a lot of boy in Tom. But when
you play in the NFL and everybody is aiming at you,
not just on the field, but there is tremendous jealousy,
(25:22):
it's incredible, and everybody wants to take you down a peg,
and the boy often gets knotted inside that shell. And
when the boy comes out it's really attractive.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
How did Robert Kraft present you to the group, and
was there anyone who was just like, I don't know
about this, Like how was that communicated?
Speaker 2 (25:49):
You know, you can learn a lot from him about
how to deal with people and whether he's dealing with
I mean, that year he was dealing with I'm not
even gonna say his name, but the current president. He
was dealing with Rupert Murdoch. He was dealing with rival owners,
(26:09):
he was dealing with lawyers and agents, he was dealing
with the commissioner. And I got to watch him and
in each instance he's different. It depends one environment he's in.
With me, he was very low key, like I knew
my place.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
So there wasn't any resistance from anyone.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
No, And there also wasn't an big announcement because it
wasn't like that. Okay, it was up to me to
request interviews with people. You know, if I want to
interview Randy Moss, I have to reach out to Randy Moss.
But I was allowed to be in the building. I
had access to basically whatever I asked. When they went
(26:52):
to the Super Bowl, you know, my request there was Frankly,
I don't really care about the game, right, but I
want to be there the week before the game and
I want to go into the rooms and see what's
going on. Like what you're not going to see on
game day is far more interesting for a writer. You
(27:13):
all watch the game. You don't need me to tell
you what happened in the game, and so I don't
even really need to watch the game. And that's how
it was for most Sundays. But being in the locker room,
he never said this is Jeff and he's going to
be in here. I was just told, this is where
you stand. Do not you don't talk to people, no
tape recorders, no notepads, You're just an observer, which was
(27:38):
incredibly valuable.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
But how did you deal with that if you couldn't
bring a notepad in? How did you kind of, oh
start everything?
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Because the stuff that I saw was unforgettable, Like when
Mike Pompeo came. Every week there was, you know, an
incredible array of special guests in the owner's box. When
Mike Pompeo came, that game was kind of a blowout.
And so normally Robert wouldn't go down to the locker
(28:06):
room until the very end, but that game was not close,
so he took you know, Pompeo down early and I
just I go. And when we got down there, no
one's in the locker room because the game is still
going and we're in there early. At least we thought
no one was in the locker room, so we could
(28:27):
go in there and it's quiet, and then all of
a sudden, we're standing there. Robert was explaining things about
the locker room to you know, the secretary, and all
of a sudden, these double doors from the trainer's room
come open. They're like hospital double doors, and it's Rob
Gronkowski comes like bounding through the door because he got
hurt and he'd gone in to get this huge ice
(28:50):
pack wrapped around his lower leg. You could actually see,
like this is why I don't need a notepad. I
can visualize. You could see some blood through the ice
and he had this big pack on and he was
he was shocked to see them and they were surprised
to see him. I don't know if Rob knew who
Pompeio was, to be honest, what does he care, right,
(29:14):
I mean, it's Mike Pompeo. Yeah, but you know, Robert
introduced him and then there was this great conversation about
you know, how you're doing, You're okay and Rob, you know,
of course Rob' said oh, I'll be fine, I'll be fine.
And you know, Roberts says, we need you next week
because we're playing the Colts. You know, we hate the
Colts and they're the Spike eight people, and and you
(29:35):
know Rob was assuring him to be fine. But when
you're seeing stuff like that, like I don't forget. And
then when i'd get back to my computer, which I
had at the stadium, I'd take all the notes down
if it's during the game. And I was in the
Owner's box for pretty much every Sunday. I was allowed
to bring my laptop into the box. So during the game,
(29:56):
I wasn't watching much football at all. I was watching
I had the best seat in the stadium, and I'm
not watching the game. I was watching the people in
the box and everything that was going on. And I
was typing like a madman, of typing what I'm seeing.
Because when I write the story for you, the reader,
(30:17):
I don't want you to have me tell you what
I think. I just want you to see what I see.
And so I'm describing things instead of like opining, I'm describing,
so it gives you the feeling like you're where I am.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
So I'm glad you brought that up because I thought
a big difference between the book and the docuseries was Belichick.
I do, and I know when you called into the
Billion Lisa Show we talked about it a little bit.
So in the book, I feel like you talked about
Belichick like it was a more intimate experience, and then
(30:54):
the docuseries presented him well, he actually was interviewed in
the docuseries, so he was presenting himself. Yes, and maybe
that's where the difference came, because yeah, I really feel
like I walked away from reading your book as being like, Okay,
this this is the way it should have been. This
is he was a coach, he was dealing with things.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
Is that a fair assessment, Well, it's it's definitely different.
Because a writer, I could make somebody look and sound
really bad. I can make somebody look and sound really great.
I can make somebody look and sound sympathetic. I can
(31:36):
make them sound mean a writer. A writer can do
a lot to affect the way the reader perceives the
person on the page. And I always feel like, especially
in a book like this, I go out of my
way to try to portray the people I can. I
(31:59):
want to put them the best slide I can that
also has the right context, and so it doesn't. It's
it's not accurate contextually to just make someone out to
be an a hole because you don't necessarily like the
way they do things if you need them to be
an a hole in a moment, because someone like Ted
(32:21):
Johnson gets a concussion and then coach puts them back
in and he gets a second concussion, you just really
have to kind of describe that as it happened, and
you don't need to weigh in and go by the
way reader, this was stupid. That's not my job. But
here's the thing. When you're doing a documentary, the writer
(32:46):
doesn't have the ability to help you, and so you
just you're you. And Tom came out, and Tom was Tom.
He wore a sweatshirt, he didn't bring anybody with him.
He cried because that's what Tom does. He's emotional, he's
(33:09):
honest and sincere, and he just sort of he's not
an actor. He's not an actor. And Bill comes out,
and Bill was Bill. Bill was Bill no one told
these guys what to do. We did not call Tom
up in advance and say, hey, you should wear a sweatshirt.
(33:30):
You'll look authentic. You should try to smile because people
will like you. We don't do that with anybody. If
someone like Rupert Murdoch's office calls and says, how are
other people in the show dressing, will say, well, Al
Michaels wore a sport coat, so did Lee Steinberg, bon
(33:50):
Jovi wore a leather jacket. I mean it's Rupert. He
can wear whatever he wants. That's what we told everybody.
And Bill came in dressed the way Bill doesn't dress,
and a suit and tie.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
He looks so uncomfortable.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
If Bill had come in with a hoodie and the
sleeves cut to me, he would have just been more
comfortable and Ben himself. And there was tension in that interview.
It was palpable in the room for everybody, And unfortunately
there's not a lot. This is not a movie, by
(34:27):
the way, where a documentary is literally what it says.
You sit in front of the camera, we aim it
at you, We turn the light on and we ask
you questions and you answer. It's not like acting with
makeup and fifty cuts and we can edit and do
all this stuff. It's just it's what you say. Randy
Moss was hilarious. I mean, he imitates Forrest Gump. He's
(34:49):
like Tom Hanks running down the field, you know, and
he's even got the accent going because that's how Randy is.
I actually thought that one of the best things about
the documentary is a rare instance where everybody got to
see all of these people as they are totally true.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
I want to ask you about Tom. One more thing
about Tom Brady. He went through spy Gate, he went
through to flate Gate, he went through you know, marital
girlfriend scandals, the Alex Guerrero piece of this whole thing.
Why do you think he was always able to take
the high road because he was, like, like you said,
(35:34):
he was always a target.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
Yeah, I've had the you know. To me, I consider
it like a huge privilege of doing Tom and Lebron
back to back because although they're very different guys, one
thing in common is they put up with more shit
(35:58):
than when you get to the stage they're at in
their profession. There's so much crap that you have to
put up with and deal with and it's just it's
exhausting that part of it because it's got nothing to
do with the physical part of being an athlete. It's
(36:19):
the mental part that actually is way more tiring and
draining on people like that And what so impressed me
about Tom Even in private when we're doing these interviews,
it's just him and I. I mean, I have tape
recorders on the table, so I'm capturing. But the rule
that I have with as I said with Tom, like,
(36:40):
any time you want me to turn off the recorder,
just tell me and I'll shut it off and I
won't ask you why. Right, it doesn't matter if you
just don't want to, it's pause or off. Tom was
like that in private too, Like that's what's really interesting.
There's people, as you all know who in public or
(37:02):
in the office or when you're next to them, they
are they're nice, and when you're not there, they're different.
And I'm just saying that Tom was consistent when I
was alone with him, and I would ask him about
certain players, not because I was trying to get him
to to dish on people. On the contrary, I'm just
(37:24):
trying to I'm just doing my job to understand some
of the dynamics of these relationships. I'm just telling you
that Tom always naturally went out of his way to say, look,
you know, let me let me explain this from Bill's perspective, right,
let me let me Yes, we had our disagreements, but
(37:47):
he's he's mature enough to say, look, I understand it
from Bill's point of view. Doesn't mean I like it,
and it doesn't mean that I necessarily agree with it.
But the fact that he has self awareness to say
I understand that he has a point of view, and
there's a reason that he has the point of view.
(38:08):
Most people can't do that, right. Tom could do that,
and he was to me, that's incredibly mature and very
unusual usual. Yeah. It made me like him, you know,
all the more because I just know it's hard to
(38:30):
do that.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
Can you explain the Alex Guerrero relationship?
Speaker 2 (38:35):
Sure?
Speaker 1 (38:36):
Did you witness?
Speaker 2 (38:39):
So Alex is someone that Tom was fortunate to meet,
because he never would have met him if it wasn't
for Willie mcguinnis. Tom was a few years into his
career in New England. Willie McGinnis was a veteran. At
that point, Willie had had some injuries. Willie's from southern
(38:59):
California from you know, gone to USC. He grew up
in LA and Alex Guerrero worked with some of the
PAC twelve schools in southern California, and that's how Willie
McGinnis knew him. And he had helped Willie work through
some injuries. And when Tom got to the point where
he couldn't throw because he had so much pain in
(39:20):
his elbow and he's in his twenties, and Willie basically said,
I know a guy you should talk to, and they
brought him out and Tom worked with him a little
and it worked, and so he started working with him
more and more. And the thing is, I think here's
where I know Alex. Alex worked on me because when
(39:42):
I was working on the book, I hurt my back
and Tom could see in one of my interviews I
was in so much pain that it was hard for
me to sit down and he literally pulled out his
cell phone. He's like, Alex, I got some guy, you
got to talk. You got to help Jeff. So I
love that. Yeah, And did it help? Yeah? It did.
I mean it actually helped me as a writer too.
(40:04):
And the reason I say that is because there was
no better inside information than to have your body being manipulated,
physically manipulated by the team that worked on Tom, and
so it helped me understand what he meant to Tom.
(40:25):
The way I would look at it is this is like,
it doesn't really matter what anybody else thinks about Alex Guerrero.
It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what a surgeon thinks,
it doesn't matter what anybody thinks. The only thing that
matters is what Tom thinks. And I'm not saying that
(40:47):
as a way to discount Alex. On the contrary, I'm
not doing that because I know what happened to me.
I'm saying that Tom found Lebron found someone, Tiger found someone.
These guys find people because they're at a place in
(41:12):
their profession where no one else is, and they do
things to remain there that other people don't do. There
are a bunch of quarterbacks in the NFL right now
that are exceptionally good quarterbacks, and I would be very
and I don't make predictions. I'm not a sports writer,
but I'm very comfortable saying none of them, none of
(41:38):
them are going to play for twenty three years, and
none of them if they managed to survive for twenty
three years, would be running around the way Tom was
in year twenty three, where he was in the top
three categories statistically of all the quarterbacks leave the league
(42:01):
in his twenty third year. No one else is going
to do that. And I could say at the same time,
there's no player in the NBA right now, not Luka Doncich,
not Djokich, not Steph Curry that can do what Lebron
has done. That man is running around right now as
a forty year old, and he's he's doing things that
(42:22):
he should not be able to do physically. And Tom
was like that, and Alex Guerrero had a big part.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
In that, right And I just think as fans like
we could never understand if it was working for Tom,
why was it such a big deal to Bill to
get him out of there.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
So this is where that perspective is important. When you're
a coach and you have fifty three players, and in
the NFL, fifty three players have pain every week. Because
pain is I'm not saying fifty three players are injured,
but pain is part of playing in the NFL. It's
part of the game. So these guys are with the
(43:04):
training staff on a daily basis. It's like the military
in the sense that there's a protocol, there's a system,
and when you have one guy who has his own system,
and suddenly other guys Julian Edelman, Rob Gronkowski start going
to that guy because that guy is helping them heal
(43:29):
faster and better than the training staff. Suddenly the training
staff start to feel like they're losing control and their
system is in competition, and it created a friction in
the locker room. I'm not saying I agree with it
or don't. I actually understand it my view on the
(43:49):
whole thing. And this is easy for me because I'm
the journalist. I'm not the coach, I'm not the owner,
and I'm not the quarterback. But I'm sitting there going
and I have the benefit of hindsight. But I'm coming
in at the end of the dynasty. This thing's winding down,
and I'm looking at Tom and I'm saying, Holy mackerel,
this guy is in his nineteenth year. Twenty eighteen was
(44:13):
year nineteen for him, year nineteen with the same team
and the same coach. And I'm thinking to myself, if
I run a company, this guy has shown everybody. He's
an outlier. He is not like anyone else who's ever
had this job. And there's been a lot of guys
(44:34):
that have had this job. Joe Montana, John Elway, Dan Marino,
they're all in the Hall of Fame. None of them
have been able to do what this guy's done. This
is one of those times where you do what you're
not used to doing, which is there's a different set
(44:55):
of rules for that guy, and he's earned that because
he's he's when you try to take a guy like that.
I learned this from Mike Krzyzewsky. Mike told me when
I was working on the Lebron book, I'll never forget this.
Mike said, there's certain players as a coach because he
coached the Olympic team, so he had Kobe and Lebron,
(45:18):
and he said, when I had Kobe and Lebron on
my team, he said, I changed the rules for those
two guys. And the first rule was neither of them
were going to have a position. Think about that, as
a coach, you have five players with positions, but you
have one guy you have no position. You don't have
a position. Because Kobe Bryant was so good the coach
(45:42):
was just like it would be actually bad coaching if
I were to try to force Kobe into a position.
He was too good for that, and so was Lebron
and Tom is that when Tom's on the field, he
oh so many things. He's done this for so long,
(46:03):
and his conditioning was so insanely unusual, the sleeping patterns,
the food, the stuff that he was doing with his body.
I think Bill had never coached a player like that,
and you know what, neither did anyone else. So that's
(46:24):
not a knock on Bill. Bill Parcells never coached a
player like that. No one had, and I think that
it was hard because it's hard to have someone like that.
Speaker 1 (46:33):
Like.
Speaker 2 (46:33):
The benefit is you keep getting hardware every year. The
hard part is he's not like anybody else, and your
whole system is around merit and everyone gets treated the
same and there's no stars and all that. It's hard
to say you have no stars when the biggest star
in the game is on.
Speaker 1 (46:52):
Your team, right can we I want to ask what
your take is on Bill going to UNC and what
do you think is going to happen? You know with
n I L And I mean, do you think he'll
create a great program there.
Speaker 2 (47:18):
That's a little outside the scope of my book, and
I'm not saying that to I'm not going to dart
the question. I'm just saying obviously I didn't write about
that because that happened after. But yeah, I'm just what
I would say is this Bill. There's only one coach
in the history of professional football who's won more games
(47:40):
as a coach than Bill, and Bill is this close
to him, and I think rightfully so it was enormously
important for him to break that record. And he really
(48:00):
only needed to coach at most two more seasons. And
there are no other records for Bill but that one,
but that one actually really matters. And I think it's interesting,
I'll use that word that when Bill left New England,
(48:25):
Tom and Bill both leave New England, which in a
way is kind of heartbreaking for New England fans. I'm
a New England fan, so it's sad when legends leave
Bobby or Larry Bird. It's like it's a bummer when
it ends, and you wonder, is there ever going to
be another hockey player like Bobby Orr or like Larry Bird,
(48:45):
or like Tom Brady. And you know, it's tough when
Tom left We all know what happened when Bill left.
A lot of people assumed that he would go somewhere else,
and there were a lot of job openings that year
(49:07):
and nobody hired. And then came a second season and
nobody hired. And I just think that, you know, college
football is not the NFL. It's not. And North Carolina
is not Ohio State and Michigan. It's North Carolina. And
(49:27):
so the college football game is so different. These are
not men. These are boys. They're literally coming right out
of high school. They're boys. Some of them are still
technically minors when they get there, and they are not
used to or equipped to perform and be coached the
(49:53):
way men are coached in the NFL. It's different. When
you're in the NFL, you have a contract, it's a job.
Most of these guys have a family, and you know
what it means to go to work every day and
put your uniform on. In college, now you can jump
from team to team every year. The portal is there,
(50:14):
there's nil, there's money and all these other crazy things.
It's a new universe for Bill. Yes, it's football, but
it's not the NFL. And so look, I know as
much as you and the audience know about how that's
all going to work out. All I'm saying is I
don't think that this was the plan.
Speaker 1 (50:35):
That's fair. I usually end our little discussion here with
the DM from someone who could not be here, and
overwhelmingly the dms came in. What happened with Malcolm Butler?
What happened with Malcolm Butler?
Speaker 2 (50:51):
Oh, what happened?
Speaker 1 (50:55):
They keep saying it was a football decision. That's what
you're say in the book, like it's a football Well, in.
Speaker 2 (51:01):
The book, I said what Bill said, right, And in
the documentary we were able to learn more. And that's
because sometimes the benefit of doing a documentary after a book,
which doesn't happen very often, but we did it with
Tiger and we did it here, is once the book
(51:22):
comes out, you actually, if you treat people properly in
the book, you actually garner more trust because you didn't
abuse relationships, you didn't abuse people's trust. You can actually
go deeper if you get to do another take another pass.
And the documentary afforded that opportunity, and people did go deeper.
(51:45):
And one subject, because so many people are curious about
the Malcolm Butler situation and Malcolm Butler agreed to be
interviewed on camera, and we asked Malcolm that question seven
different ways because there are a variety of rumors. And
I say rumors because if there's seven stories about what happened,
(52:09):
at least six of them aren't true, at least six
of them, and maybe all seven. So we asked them
all the different stories, and the bottom line is this.
No player, not Tom, not Devin mccordy, the team captain
on defense, not one player had a clue that Malcolm
(52:30):
wasn't going to play, and most of them didn't realize it.
On the defensive side, they didn't realize it till they
ran out on the field for the first series and
he wasn't there. They had no idea that he wasn't playing.
That's a fact. Okay, that's not supposition, that's not a rumor.
(52:51):
That's a baseline fact. So if you start with that,
think about it from think about who we're talking about.
We're talking about the most prepared coach in the NFL.
That's one of Bill's great assets, qualities, whatever you want
to call it. It's an accolade. He out prepares everybody,
and his team has no surprises well, that was a
(53:16):
huge surprise in the biggest game of their life. So
that tells me something as a journalist, that something was
going on that's not just a football decision, because if
it was a football decision, you tell the defense the
football decision and why this guy's playing, and you practice
(53:39):
and prepare for that. So if you think about all
the rumors you have heard about what happened that week,
none of that adds up, and none of it's true.
He was smoking pot, he was out late, he missed
the team meeting, he missed the team playing. All of
that just set it aside because none of that is accurate.
(54:04):
It's just not accurate. So then you get to, well,
then what else is there? And where I'm safe saying
is that the thing that was behind it was not
football related. It was more personal. And sometimes I'm not
(54:25):
comfortable telling you what it is because I can't prove
that it was that, and I would never say something
that I can't prove. And so I'm not going to
sit here and spew rumors and things that are that
are not real. It's not it's not fair to anybody,
it's not fair to Malcolm and and so I would
(54:45):
just say that. What's really unfortunate, if you think about it,
is this team won the Super Bowl the year before
the greatest comeback ever twenty eight to three. They won
the Super Bowl after when they beat the Rams. The
best of those three teams was the team that lost
to the Eagles. That was the best of those three seasons.
(55:10):
And that game against Eagles was Tom's best performance statistically.
I mean, nothing beats what he did against Atlanta, but
statistically what Tom did against Philadelphia was the best game
he ever played of his nine trips to the Super Bowl.
And they lost, and they lost because they could not
(55:34):
stop the Eagles on defense. And so to me, what's
you know, I get close to the border of being
less a journalist than when I look at it just
as a fan. It's heartbreaking that we didn't get three
in a row because we should have. And I think
the players know that. I think Bill knows that, the
(55:56):
owner knows that, the fans know it, and he Eagles
know it exactly.
Speaker 1 (56:02):
All right, Well, this is really spectacular. I could talk
to you for another hour. Next up we have author
Gregory Maguire, who wrote Wicked, and his new book Elfie,
which is the prequel He will be doing My book
Club May twenty first at Joss and Maine. The link
to register is up and live, so get in because
(56:23):
it will sell out. Thanks so much for listening.
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