Much has been said and written from folks on the outside about The Dynasty: The New England Patriots. A couple of guys who were on the inside with the team, who are now on the inside at NBC, recently spoke about their experiences with the filming of the series and the final product.
“It just seemed so Tom-and-Bill-centric,” former Patriots safety Rodney Harrison said, in reference to quarterback Tom Brady and coach Bill Belichick. “And [owner Robert] Kraft. I didn’t enjoy it. I stopped. Because it didn’t tell the stories. . . . It was centered around some things that I wasn’t really feeling. And I just stopped watching. I mean, I interviewed for five or six hours I was in New York, and all they had me saying was, ‘Fuck ‘em all. Fuck ‘em all.’ Like, that’s it. That’s all I saw myself say. Like, I have a lot of input into Tom and how these guys treated me and the things that happened that led to me signing here. That was a big deal. You know, I just — I wasn’t a big fan of it.”
Defensive back Devin McCourty said he spent four or five hours with the production in New York and another two or three hours in Massachusetts. The time , “Man, this is gonna be great.” He did not agree once he saw it.
“I felt like I got kind of duped,” McCourty said. “I watched and I was just like, man, only things I said that could come across as negative to Bill was the only thing [used]. Like, I mean, I had different kind of quick sentences on things, but the longest thing I talked about was 2016 with Trump and the letter [Belichick sent in support of his candidacy for president]. And I thought that was probably the worst part. That everything that we all gave to the 20 years that it encompassed, they only hit anything that was negative.”
McCourty thought, for example, that there was a major pivot in the franchise in 2010. However, instead of focusing on that, they focused on something else.
“I thought 2010 was like a changing of the guard for so many different things with New England. Like, some of the older players were gone, and it was just like every move had to be made right to try to move on and the only thing they talked about was Aaron Hernandez,” McCourty said.
He expressed further disappointment that the documentary left out things that would have made Belichick look good.
“Bill was a big reason we helped a guy get released from prison after 28 years,” McCourty said. “He was one of the first people after I read and told everybody about this story raise his hand and he said, ‘How do we help?’ He said, ‘I’m willing to sign my name on a letter that goes to the governor.’ And you know the impact of Bill Belichick’s name on anything in Massachusetts. And I thought that showed so much growth and change of how he saw things outside of football compared to years before. And it was just like, ‘Well, that makes him look good, so we’re not gonna include that.”
Bottom line? Players didn’t rush for the exits. They wanted to stay.
“Hey, we won at a high level,” McCourty said. “Guys stayed there. Like, I could have left two times. I signed back. There’s reasons why.”
Rodney broadened the lens to put Belichick’s overall accomplishments in perspective.
“Bill was a hell of a coach,” Harrison said. “They act like the last three or four years, because the Patriots struggled, that Bill can’t coach. You give me one game and you give me Bill’s Xs and Os, I’ll take him over anybody. . . I just didn’t like the way that he was made out. . . . I just don’t think he got enough credit, enough respect, enough props. Man, this dude is the greatest coach of all time.”
It’s a compelling perspective, given that both were among the many who were interviewed for the series. And it fuels the critics who have suggested the documentary was aimed at making Belichick look bad — and at making Kraft look good.