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Michael Holley

Review: Belichick and Brady by Michael Holley

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I had the chance to review a copy of the championship edition of Michael Holley’s Belichick and Brady book and really enjoyed it. It was fun to re-live the past decade-and-a-half of Patriots football but solely through the lens of the two biggest characters at the center of it.

It’s really been such a remarkable ride and one that shifted drastically from when the Patriots were the darlings of the football world to when they became polarizing figures at the center of controversies both real and manufactured. Now you either love Belichick and Brady or hate them and the book does a good job of breaking down why.

I thought both Spygate and Deflategate were evenly handled. I know that will win points with many readers, others not so much, but Holley does an excellent job during the Deflategate episode of really breaking down how terribly the NFL handled the situation, how biased it was from the get go and all the many conflicts of interest just continued to pile up as the saga wore on.

Most of all it’s fun to get some small glimpses behind the curtain. There wasn’t an overwhelming amount of information that I hadn’t already heard or read about, but there was just enough to keep it feeling fresh. Holley is an excellent writer and really did justice to the drama of every season without getting too bogged down in the unnecessary details.

It’s definitely worth checking out if you like these kind of historical perspectives, but it’s exciting to know that significant chapters of it are still unwritten.

Pick up a copy of Belichick and Brady here.

Peter King reveals some Patriots nuggets from Michael Holley’s upcoming “War Room”

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Michael Holley’s new book “War Room” will be released next week and Peter King reveals some Patriots nuggets:

• Scouts were ticked off in 2006 that Belichick overrode their reports and picked Laurence Maroney in the first round (apparently on the strong advice of Josh McDaniels’ brother Ben, one of the Maroney’s college coaches) and Chad Jackson in the second round – even after receivers coach Brian Daboll said he didn’t want to coach Jackson.

• After the Boston Herald reported (incorrectly, as it turned out) that the Patriots had taped a Rams practice before the 2002 Super Bowl, Belichick went to his captains and asked if he should address the team about it – just before the Super Bowl they played against the Giants in February 2008. The captains said no, so Belichick didn’t talk to the team about it.

• Defensive keystone Vince Wilfork didn’t like the trade of Mike Vrabel to Kansas City before the 2009 season. “That trade ticks me off. Right now. Still. When I heard about it, I said, ‘What the f— is going on?’ If you want to talk about the Patriot Way, you start with Vrabel.’ ”

• It wasn’t just management that came to dislike free agent signee Adalius Thomas. It was the players. Tedy Bruschi on Thomas: “He started to question a lot of things in meeting. ‘Why are we doing that?’ ‘Why don’t we just do this?’ He stopped buying in on what the coaches thought. He really did think he had all the answers, you know? And that’s what he turned into: the answer man. That’s when I was on my way out and I was glad to get out at that point.”

BSMW: New Michael Holley/Patriots Book Coming!

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BSMW: New Michael Holley/Patriots Book Coming!

I have a dream that someday, long after BB retires, he’ll write a tell all opus that goes into great detail about his time with the Patriots. Because he is such a collector of football books, and has such an appreciation for the history of the game, I really want to believe that he’ll want to leave behind an inside look at his first ballot Hall of Fame coaching career.

Until that time we’ll have to do with other insider accounts, and after giving us Patriot Reign, it looks like Michael Holley has a new book coming out October 4th, 2011, entitled “War Room”.

Here are some details that Bruce Allen at BSMW tracked down:

Sports commentator and bestselling author Michael Holley will follow three NFL teams from training camp 2010, through the Super Bowl, and into the April draft, providing a new look at Belichick’s influence, which has now spread from the Patriots to other teams, particularly the KC Chiefs and the Atlanta Falcons.

A little further down, it expands on the description:

This is a football book with three central characters: Patriots head coach Bill Belichick, Chiefs general manager Scott Pioli, and Falcons general manager Thomas Dimitroff.

Michael Holley will follow Belichick, Pioli, and Dimitroff through the entire 2010 season—from training camp 2010, through the Super Bowl, and into the April draft—exploring the personal connections of the three men and the increasing influence of the Patriot way. Belichick and Pioli have been friends since the 1980s, when Belichick was a young coordinator for the New York Giants. They worked together in Cleveland, New York (Jets) and New England. In 2008, Pioli left for Kansas City to build a Midwestern Patriots model. A year before Pioli left, Dimitroff was the surprising top GM choice of the Falcons, who dreamed of building Patriots South in Atlanta.

The culmination of the narrative will be all three men preparing their teams for the lifeblood of the NFL, which is the draft, as all three franchises seek to improve themselves through similar philosophies but perhaps different strategies.

We know that Holley got some great access for Patriot Reign, so this is an exciting development and should make for a great read. Things I’m most interested to read about:

  • The playoff loss to the Jets. How it influenced the 2011 offseason.
  • BB being the defacto defensive coordinator and how he worked with all the young players on the roster.
  • What Scott Pioli sees in Todd Haley.
  • Any insight into the Logan Mankins ordeal.

Should be a great read. Can’t wait to get my paws on it…