Thoughts/Impressions on “The Dynasty” Apple TV Series
- Thread starter Dewey's 'stache
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He hasn't had to be fast enough to be the last guy to push a kickoff return guy out of bounds for quite a few years (enjoying the lasagna and the cannoli). I was very disappointed when he left the Pats.
I can’t believe they have Tommy Guerino on here in the first ten minutes of episode one. I have tried and tried and tried to get him off my social media algorithm but can’t shake him.
I’ve never seen the camera angle of Drew on the ground. His eyes were GLAZED. But didn’t he come back in the game?
Also Dr. Z’s power ranking the next week in SI was so depressing.
“Current: 31. Prev: 29. New England Patriots (0-2). This is sad. Drew Bledsoe took a big hit and is out indefinitely. Honestly, I don't know what weapons they have with which to win a game.”
Also Dr. Z’s power ranking the next week in SI was so depressing.
“Current: 31. Prev: 29. New England Patriots (0-2). This is sad. Drew Bledsoe took a big hit and is out indefinitely. Honestly, I don't know what weapons they have with which to win a game.”
I remember screen shorting that Dr. Z. ESPN Power Rankings after they won the Sb and sending to my brother - he's a JETS fan. Ha. 0-2, Bledsoe out, Belichick's seat getting a little toasty and then...the freaking DYNASTY!
He did. Played the next series.
Then Brady came in for the final series, still winnable game, and completed 5 of his first 6 passes to move the Pats form their own 26 to the Jets 29. But then he threw 4 straight incompletions.
As I recall, Bledsoe's condition worsened as the game went on, leading to Brady having to come in at the end.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5e-V8N7Zz4
The Mo Lewis hit is around 2:07:00 and Drew comes out for the next drive at 2:15:00. He didn't really do much: handoff, pitch to the outside, penalty, shovel pass to Marc Edwards who then fumbled. Drew doesn't really appear again until around 2:26:00 when he's on the sideline looking a bit woozy as Brady subs in for him.
Thanks for the link!
That’s unbelievable.
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I watched it. That’s insane. The doc made it seem like he basically died while down…but he’s a tough son of a bitch.
“We are being told his replacement is NOT because of injury”
that’s weird.
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The Edwards fumble may have saved Bledsoe's life. If the drive continued and Drew took another hit while bleeding internally, who knows what happens.
Thank you, Marc Edwards.
Thank you, Marc Edwards.
Indeed. I didn't know that fans were literally hanging Bellchick in effigy in Cleveland. Shit got intense.
I will say I’m enjoying learning new things from the doc then learning actual new things by coming here and being told the truth.
Documentaries can be such a sham lol. It’s all storytelling baby!
I’m not saying this should take the homer approach of something like 3 Games to Glory but the focus of these episodes seems skewed a bit towards the negative.
I’ve been fairly ambivalent on the Butler benching being the scapegoat for the SB LII loss mostly because Butler had been extremely inconsistent in ‘17 and had been supplanted as the no.1 guy by Gilmore. Could Butler have made a better play than Rowe on the Alshon Jeffrey TD? Sure, but the complete inability of the Pats D to stop the run/get to Foles/off the field on 3rd down seem much bigger than the contributions of any 1 player.
I find the descriptions of these episodes to be kind of hilarious. The second to last episode is described as “Tensions boil over when Belichick makes a questionable decision on the biggest stage” – and the last one is called “End Game.” They do know the Dynasty squeezed in another Super Bowl title there, don’t they?
Drew was tough. Early childhood memory, but didn’t he win a game with a broken finger with a huge pass to Coates? Or did Coates have the broken finger?
He broke his finger late in MNF matchup against the Dolphins in ‘98 and won the game on a late TD pass. He followed that up with another last second win against the Bills the following week (the Bills protested a late penalty by walking off the field, leading Vinatieri to walk in for unopposed 2pt conversion) and beat the Steelers the following week. But the finger kept getting worse and after a disastrous loss to the Rams, he missed the rest of the season and the playoff game against the Jags. They somehow managed to beat a really good Niners team at home in Week 16 with Zolak at QB, but they were largely done after that.
Those back to back wins were probably my favorite random wins during the Drew era. Much fun.
Obviously not offering any strong opinions until I watch it, but, based their own promotional statements, devoting 6 out of the ten episodes of this to the decline of the dynasty seems excessive, and is giving me some pause. Very curious to see how those episodes are handled.
I'm not sure how they could devote 6 of the final 10 episodes to the decline, if episode 4 is spygate. There are 3 more SB victories to get through after that point.
The thing for me that this documentary brings is a flood of great memories with friends, family, etc. I can't help but watch highlights from these games and not look for myself and my friends in our seats, think about who I was with at what game (some folks who are unfortunately no longer with us). I know there's a few others like me here that have attended hundreds of games both before and during the Dynasty, and some of the best times of my life were those games (my 3 closest friends still joke with our wives and kids that the Snow Bowl was the best day of our lives). It's hard to remember everything all the time, but the little reminders that this is giving made it a lot dustier and emotional from a personal perspective, as opposed to a fan perspective, than I was ready for, but in a good way.
Guessing maybe it's all in the definition of decline. Are they marking that as the point when BB and The Krafts relationship started to change? When Camelot started to become controversial? I'm looking forward to binging all of it, with some trepidation.
We're through 2 of 10 and haven't reached the first Super Bowl. Certainly seems like they probably aren't going to spend a ton of time highlighting each individulal Super Bowl victory. Episode 4 is the Spygate one and so that means in episode 3 they basically need to cover 3 Super Bowls and the AFCCG loss to the Colts in 06. Seems like the focus/slow down is going to be the controversies. Spygate, Hernandez, Deflategate, the Brady/Belichick relationship deteriorating.
Not sure this bodes well.
Granted it's Volin who's not my favorite. But still...
Bill Belichick is portrayed as the villain in ‘The Dynasty,’ but he deserves better
Granted it's Volin who's not my favorite. But still...
Bill Belichick is portrayed as the villain in ‘The Dynasty,’ but he deserves better
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I guess it's just a different reading of the "decline of the dynasty" then. To me, the Dynasty decline doesn't begin until 2019. Were there controversies, down years, etc., sure, but they won SB's in 2014, 2016 and 2018, and all of those things (Spygate, Hernandez, Deflategate) happened prior to those seasons. We'll find out, but I'm certainly not concerned. It's a 20 year run of excellence, that had plenty of shitty moments and it ended, and it's going to probably focus on all of it in some way, but the Dynasty perservered though most of it.
Volin is being his usual self. Curran said something to the effect of "It got as bad as you imagined and was as even better than you remembered."
Stick with that.
This was all filmed while BB was still the coach. Any and all comments that seem "anti-BB" were made while he was still in the building. So I'm interested to see how that plays.
Take it for what it's worth, but there's definitely twitter chatter about this being a Kraft production, with them sharing credit with Bill for choosing Brady over Bledsoe and blaming Bill for Brady leaving and the team's current sad state. If nothing else, the candid anecdotes from the players and staff who where there are the most compelling piece anyway.
Did Kraft share credit with Bill for choosing Brady over Bledsoe? I just watched the first two episodes last night and didn't come away with that impression at all. In fact, Kraft is pretty clear in saying that he didn't like the decision. All Kraft did was not overrule Bill, but that's kind of an obvious requirement, right?
That is interesting because my take on the first two episodes is that it directly contradicts that Twitter chatter.
Maybe I missed something - which is crazy because I watched episode two a few times now (Dynasty is a hell of a drug) - but it pretty clear that BB/Ernie and Pioli were in favor of Brady while Kraft actively backed Bledsoe.
Obviously we still have a bunch of installments to get through but I don't feel like the first two episodes are skewed in any one direction. Except the awesome one.
Michael Felger was kinda touching on this earlier today. According to him, Kraft was like "Boy, Bill & I really took a lot of heat deciding to go with Tom over Drew" while pointing Bill's way for the current state of the team.
I wouldn't put too much stock in the local media's response to this. Volin spent 3 months hyping why Bill should get canned and, now that he has been, is pivoting to trashing Kraft. Felger spends his time finding new ways to sully the whole thing by arguing Bill was a distant second to Brady (Volin says the same in today's column too) and that Kraft is little more than a meddlesome egomaniac. Bedard's storylines always end with him saying, "I was right all along." Contrast that to someone like Curran who seems to have actually loved covering this dynasty and still sounds invested in reporting actual news.
In short, fuck most of these guys and their bitter self-serving promotional bullshit.
In short, fuck most of these guys and their bitter self-serving promotional bullshit.
Does Felger explain when that quote occurs? That is not in any of the footage I saw. Maybe its in later episodes?
It would definitely contradict the narrative in the first two installments.
That just reminds me of how straight up Bledsoe ran ---- which is also why he was never really good at the sneak.
Someone (tuned in late) was being interviewed on BPR today and said she''d seen most of the series and that it came off as Bill being the villain - he was "caught in a lie" about Spygate and it was a clear violation of the rules. Also that Deflategate was clearly real because, "come on, he calls himself The Deflator, he smashes his phone,"...
If this is the way the series comes across to non-knowledgeable viewers, it'll be a disservice to the Patriots and the public.
If this is the way the series comes across to non-knowledgeable viewers, it'll be a disservice to the Patriots and the public.
I could see the argument that Kraft positioned himself to have it both ways. He backed Bledsoe in the sense that he went to BB on Bledsoe's behalf; he backed Brady in the sense that he let BB decide.
I didn't get the impression that it was a direct quote and he didn't elaborate. I'm guessing he's seen the whole thing, but it could just be another case of Felger being Felger.
If you read the Jeff Benedict book that this series is based on, he is pretty fair to the Pats. He beats on the NFL a little bit. Kraft is a huge source for the book. The book spends a lot of time discussing Kraft's purchase of the team, the aborted move to Hartford, and finally getting CMGI/Gillette Stadium built. It doesn't seem they are spending much time talking about that.
And that is probably a fairly accurate description of how it went down.
The question is whether that decision gets more screen time as the series goes on or this spin is simply a radio call-in take based on these first two.
I guess we will find out...
This, right here, is the correct answer. Not just regarding this specific TV series, but the entire sports media complex. Outside of actual reporting, who cares what Volin, CHB, Bedard, et al. have to say about anything?
I don't know. Maybe it's just me. But this push to turn nearly every off-field/ice/court anything into some kind of breathless morality play is easily the least interesting and most exhausting part of being a sports fan for me. None of it actually matters. I don't know these people. I have no ability to control these situations. I just can't muster up the energy to care that much.
BB is very likely a controlling asshole. Kraft is very likely a self-serving businessman. Okay... so what am I supposed to do with this information? Why should I care? Why should I let it influence how I seek and consume entertainment when the entirety of media is filled to the brim with people who exhibit the same qualities?
There is a cautionary tale here, given that none of us has seen the entire season yet. It's that media members may equate any little criticism of Bill as Kraft or the players "throwing Bill under the bus". A good chunk of the local mediots hated Belichick and so would gleefully report that Dynasty makes Bill out to be the villain.
My guess is that it will be a lot more nuanced, with Bill being called to blame for some things while also being given credit for a ton of other moves.
The Spygate stuff, while obviously overblown by Goodell, was indeed something of Bill's making. He totally blew off a letter from the commissioner's office directly telling all teams not to do what Bill was doing. And it is well known that Kraft wasn't happy and called Bill a "schmuck" for the entire fiasco.
As for Deflategate (which objectively wasn't real), it should be noted that Bill was completely exonerated by the Wells report.
The thing about Deflategate is that it wasn’t Bill who came off looking bad, it was Tom.
The criticisms of Bill will center on Spygate, Malcolm Butler decision, and Brady leaving. I suspect we’ll hear a bunch of criticism on the Butler decision, and will be interesting to hear from players (if anything).
Benedict and Hamachek (sp?) have both been on the Quick Slants podcast with Perry and Curran. Sure, it sounds like Coach Bill was an a-hole, but author and director both said that including the voices of dozens and dozens of players and staff gave the documentary credibility. If this is what they all said about BB, then that’s probably the way it was. No sense polishing a turd. But the other point is that his methods worked… until they didn’t. Period. We all reveled in the incredible success and wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Re Kraft taking credit on the Brady vs. Bledsoe decision, I think Felger and others complaining about this (shock… Mazz) have it twisted. Kraft said he would take a lot of heat if it turned out to be the wrong decision (the Modell/BB flashback immediately followed this anecdote); he didn’t say that he and Bill made that decision. Kraft supported Bill’s authority to make the decision while still thinking it should have been Bledsoe in the moment. Similar to @EddieJurak‘s point above.
Re Kraft taking credit on the Brady vs. Bledsoe decision, I think Felger and others complaining about this (shock… Mazz) have it twisted. Kraft said he would take a lot of heat if it turned out to be the wrong decision (the Modell/BB flashback immediately followed this anecdote); he didn’t say that he and Bill made that decision. Kraft supported Bill’s authority to make the decision while still thinking it should have been Bledsoe in the moment. Similar to @EddieJurak‘s point above.
And he got busted again in 2019 for videotaping. I really don't care about Spygate, but there's a pattern and an irony here.
Belichick, the ultimate disciplinarian, had a disregard for the rules. Whether it's not wearing camo gear during Vet month or giving his name to a video game, he was always counterculture.
It tracks with his accumulation of power in Foxboro. Belichick wanted to tell people what to do, and hated the other way around.
Potentially offensive thought…
Would it surprise anyone if we found out he was on the spectrum? He has such deep knowledge of obscure stuff, is prickly to a fault, but IMO he’s never performing that way - he just is.
Things with that are different than before and it’s always a touchy subject - but the man marches to the beat of his own drum and when it works it looks like a killer’s edge. When it doesn’t - he comes off very bad. But in both cases he’s always the same person
The 2019 videotaping violation was the fault of Kraft; Bill had zilch to do with that media production. Same group, IIRC, that produced Dynasty.