The New England Patriots two decades run was certainly good fodder for a TV documentary, which is why Apple TV is running a 10-part documentary on the Patriot dynasty.
What makes it different than most sports documentary is the chronicle of all the off the field stuff. Like Spygate, Deflategate, Bill Belichick’s gruff personality and his decision to bench Malcolm Butler in the Super Bowl loss to the Eagles and Tom Brady’s departure.
But the drama started even before the Belichick was hired in 2000. It started during Bill Parcells’ four year tenure as head coach of the Patriots when Parcells left after a rift developed between the coach and owner Bob Kraft.
Parcells is still unhappy that Kraft wouldn’t let him run the draft although the series leaves out some of the details.
“Kraft had no real background in football and in his inexperience took the draft away from me,” Parcells said. “I felt some people in the organization that were incompetent were making decisions for the organization.”
Kraft’s take was, “With coach Parcells I didn’t feel he always put the team first.”
Not surprising they were heading for a divorce. “I knew I wasn’t going back to the Patriots,” Parcells said.
Parcells then repeated a line he used at the time, “If they want you to cook the dinner, at least they ought to let you shop for some of the groceries.”
Parcells left after taking the team to the Super Bowl following the 1996 season and losing to the Patriots. It was no secret he was leaving and it almost overshadowed the game. Parcells didn’t even fly back on the team plane.
As Drew Bledsoe said, “That was a frustrating thing for us to go to the Super Bowl after being the worst team in the league. It was a pretty big accomplishment and that was not the story during the week of the Super Bowl. The story was whether or not Parcells was going to go to the Jets.”
And there was more drama.
Parcells signed a five year deal when he hired but after the third year, he asked Kraft to chop the final year off the deal because he wanted to leave after his fifth season. Kraft agreed but added a provision that Parcells couldn’t coach anywhere else that fifth year.
Parcells then tried to claim he was free because his contract expired after four years, ignoring the fact that Kraft had added that provision barring him from coaching elsewhere for a year. There was a lot of back and forth in the news media as Parcells insisted he was free to leave to coach somewhere else but Kraft was going to hold him to the contract.
When the Jets tried to hire him, the league back Kraft and the Jets had to give draft picks in compensation. Belichick left the Patriots to be the defensive coordinator for Parcells, who coached the Jets for three years and went 30-20 and kicked himself upstairs and named Belichick the coach. Belichick was supposedly the coach in waiting. But he immediately resigned, citing the fact the Jets ownership was in flux although maybe he wanted to get away from being under Parcells shadow.
Kraft decided to hire Belichick back although this time he had to give the Jets picks. Belichick started out 5-13, but then Bledsoe was hurt and Brady took over and the dynasty began. But the drama never seemed to end despite all the Super Bowl wins. Another team may win six – the Chiefs are halfway there—but no team is likely to duplicate all the Patriots drama.
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