Deadspin: War Room excerpt about the 2007 Patriots

Can’t wait to get the new Michael Holley book War Room tomorrow but here’s a nice little excerpt about Spygate that was interesting. I know, it might be the wrong time to bring that up but I think they really put it into context.

In New York, Mangini told his close friends that he never wanted Spygate to go as far as it did. He said he thought the matter could be worked out between the Patriots and Jets, and if it were up to him, he wouldn’t have advised Jets security and upper management to be so aggressive in their handling of the situation. His feeling was that as he was coaching, his own organization was taking things further than he would have been willing to go; for example, he never wanted the league involved. His front office did, though. It was Patriots-Jets. It was always bitter, and the feeling was that the Patriots would have done the same thing if they had caught the Jets red-handed. That was an organizational view, but because of Mangini’s history with Belichick, this became his story and his dime-dropping. By the time he walked off the field on September 9, wearing his charcoal Jets shirt, he really was the villain in black as far as the Patriots were concerned.

It no longer mattered to them how Mangini felt. They didn’t care that he actually saw things the way they did and that he believed the taping in no way undermined what they had accomplished as champions. They didn’t care that it bothered Mangini to see their dynasty, his dynasty, too, questioned and mocked. It didn’t matter. Some Patriots coaches with whom he had remained close stopped taking his calls. Others, for obvious political reasons, were sure to keep him at a public distance. Some players in New England would soon refer to him as Fredo, the resentful Corleone who betrayed his brother Michael in The Godfather. Unlike Mario Puzo’s characters, there was no acting involved between the coaches. The relationship was over.