- 6 weeks ago
Gary Myers joined Toucher & Hardy to discuss his new book Brady vs. Belichick: The Dynasty Debate, diving into Bill Belichick’s failures to evolve with the NFL and his fractured relationship with the Kraft family. Myers argued that Belichick underestimated Tom Brady’s longevity and made a huge mistake letting him go, leading to the Patriots’ decline. He also described Belichick as a brilliant football mind but not necessarily a brilliant person outside the game, noting his arrogance and condescending treatment of the media. Fred and Andrew Callahan added that Belichick’s public persona may have been more about insecurity and discomfort than true confidence.
Brady vs. Belichick: The Dynasty Debate comes out September 18th!
Brady vs. Belichick: The Dynasty Debate comes out September 18th!
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00:00Gary, hello, sir. How are you?
00:02Good morning, guys. How are you doing?
00:04We are doing well.
00:06Excitement over the pre-order of the book.
00:08Things, I would imagine, are selling briskly right now.
00:12Yeah, I mean, this is always an exciting time
00:13when it's a couple weeks before the book comes out
00:16and I start doing shows like yours
00:17and people start talking about the book.
00:20It was really a lot of fun for me to do.
00:22I had success 10 years ago with my Brady vs. Manning book.
00:26This isn't quite a sequel, but it's a rivalry nonetheless,
00:32as people in Boston know.
00:33Well, especially now, it's funny, and Andrew,
00:37you can kind of fact-check me and kind of like add
00:40anything you want when I ask these questions
00:43because I don't want you just sitting there
00:44silently fuming that I'm wrong.
00:46But another reporter, Ben Volan,
00:50that went down to North Carolina and he talked to Belichick.
00:53It didn't seem like they talked for a long time.
00:54And Belichick was like, North Carolina is a lot better.
00:58I don't have the owner or the owner's son.
01:00Like, these are shots of Jonathan and Robert Kraft, obviously.
01:03So far, so good, Fred.
01:04Yeah, and then he's like, and it's great
01:06because there's not all these voices in my ear.
01:11But, Gary, my understanding to everyone around the Patriots
01:15or anyone that writes about the NFL
01:17is that part of the falling of Belichick
01:20and the failing of Belichick is that
01:22as the NFL evolved, he didn't evolve with it
01:26in that the Patriots, it's ironic that he says
01:29his staff was too big with the Patriots
01:32when it was considerably smaller
01:34and missing entire departments that other teams had.
01:38Is that something that you've been hearing?
01:41Well, yeah.
01:41I think that, you know, Bill stuck to his ways
01:44for 20 years.
01:46And, you know, early on it worked with Robert Kraft
01:49who clearly was, you know, so appreciative
01:53that Belichick had, you know, won three championships,
01:58you know, early on in New England
02:00and increased the value of his team tremendously.
02:04But I think what happened there was
02:07as the Patriots started winning, you know,
02:09Bill became, I don't want to say he froze Kraft out,
02:16but I think his attitude towards Kraft
02:19went from being grateful to having that job
02:22to leave me alone, I know what I'm doing.
02:25And, you know, in one of the interviews I did
02:27for the book, I asked Jimmy Garoppolo,
02:29you know, who deserves the most credit,
02:31Belichick or Brady?
02:32And he said Kraft
02:33because he put out a lot of fires.
02:35And I think that was going on.
02:37And I think, you know, Bill did not evolve
02:41with the times.
02:42I think that's accurate.
02:43You know, it's quite evident.
02:45And Andrew knows this.
02:47You look at Belichick's drafts
02:49over the last 10 years
02:50of his stay in New England.
02:53And if he didn't have Brady,
02:54he probably would have been fired
02:56a lot earlier than he was.
02:58So, Gary, I'm about to engage
03:00your favorite part of this interview
03:01where I just read a quote from your book
03:03and ask you about this.
03:04This is 2020, and you interviewed Belichick
03:07about letting Tom Brady leave.
03:09And there's a sense here
03:10he didn't have any regrets.
03:11And here's what he said.
03:11Quote, 2020 was an impossible situation
03:14in New England.
03:15Brady absolutely made the right decision.
03:17We could not put a good team around him.
03:19Financially, after stretching for 10 years,
03:21by the way, when they were lowest
03:23in cash spending,
03:24we ran out of cap space
03:25and had to rebuild the team.
03:262019 was our last opportunity to win.
03:282020 was a rebuild.
03:30And we were back in the playoffs in 2021.
03:31How much of that is what Fred just described,
03:35which is revisionist history from Bill?
03:36Because obviously Tom Brady wins the Super Bowl
03:38the year after he leaves New England.
03:40And how much of that, in your view,
03:42is a fair assessment?
03:45What was the last point you said?
03:46How much of it is what?
03:47How much of it is fair?
03:48What Bill just said.
03:49Oh, okay.
03:49Fair assessment.
03:50Okay.
03:51So that's a very recent quote
03:52that I got from Belichick.
03:54And I was a little taken aback by that,
03:56that he was admitting that
03:57it was going to be an impossible situation
04:00and Tom needed to move on.
04:02I think Bill made a tremendous mistake
04:04in letting Tom go.
04:05He underestimated how much he had left.
04:08And then everything fell apart in New England.
04:12I mean, they made that quick trip back
04:14to the playoffs, rather, you know,
04:17with Mac Jones in his second year
04:19and then got blown out by Buffalo.
04:22And then it just totally disintegrated.
04:24I think the reason he let Tom go
04:28and the reason he's saying
04:30we didn't have the pieces around him
04:31is because of Belichick's own failings
04:33in personnel.
04:36You know, as I mentioned a couple minutes ago,
04:37his draft was so bad.
04:40He, you know, I think,
04:41I think a lot changed when Scott Pioli left.
04:44I know the success continued
04:46over the second half of the dynasty,
04:47but I think some standards changed
04:49with when Pioli was gone,
04:52that Scott was one of the few guys
04:54that would stand up to Belichick
04:56in terms of not only the quality of player
04:59that he was bringing in,
05:00but the quality of person he was bringing in,
05:03you know, exemplified by the whole
05:05Aaron Hernandez disaster.
05:07So I think it's fair to say
05:09that Bill did not evolve
05:11as things were changing around the NFL.
05:14Okay.
05:15So his behavior since then,
05:19Bill Belichick's.
05:20Yeah.
05:21His, and I'm not talking about
05:23just personal stuff,
05:24just his behavior,
05:25what happened with the football team,
05:27his drafting,
05:29hearing him speak publicly more often,
05:32the public failings that came out
05:34as early as when he was a defensive coordinator
05:37with the Giants.
05:39I ask everyone in this,
05:41obviously Belichick grew up
05:43with his dad coaching football.
05:45He loved watching film with his father.
05:47He knew the game very well.
05:52How impressed are you with him as a man?
05:55Like his intelligence?
05:57Like when you talk to people,
05:58your own opinion,
05:59other people's opinion,
06:00is this a guy that just was a football savant
06:04and then lacking in other areas?
06:08Or is he miss,
06:09am I misunderstanding him in that way?
06:12That is a great question,
06:13Fred.
06:14I've known Belichick probably,
06:16and it's just shows how old I am.
06:18I've known him since 1979,
06:20when he got to the Giants as an assistant coach.
06:23So I've known him forever.
06:25And I think if you asked anybody on the Giants
06:29during that period of time
06:30that he was the defensive coordinator,
06:32if they envisioned Bill as a head coach,
06:33they would have said no.
06:35Because,
06:36and that was his whole falling out
06:37with George Young,
06:38who was general manager of the Giants at the time,
06:40that George didn't think that Bill
06:42had the presence to command a room
06:44and he had the personality to lead a team.
06:47Now,
06:47I think George was proven wrong on that
06:49because of the success in New England.
06:51But Belichick,
06:53you know,
06:54I've gotten along with him recently,
06:56like the last five years or so.
06:58I sat next to him
06:59at a Hall of Fame meeting in Canton in 2020
07:02for eight hours.
07:03And we actually had a pleasant day.
07:07But up to that point,
07:09you know,
07:09he hadn't really spoken to me in 15 years or so
07:12because I was really hard on him
07:14on the Spygate stuff
07:16when I wrote for the Daily News.
07:19I always resented
07:20the way he treated the media.
07:22And I would think that Andrew
07:23would agree with me on this.
07:25I just,
07:26you know,
07:26we were just there trying to do a job
07:27and I really felt like
07:29he treated us
07:30like the lowest form of human life.
07:32And I wrote that in the book.
07:34And I think I can say this on the air.
07:37I mean,
07:38he was a turd
07:38the way he treated us.
07:39Oh,
07:40no,
07:40you can't say that.
07:41No,
07:41I'm just kidding.
07:41Go ahead.
07:42No,
07:42it's funny that you didn't think
07:43you could say that.
07:44I've said much worse.
07:45Oh,
07:45believe me.
07:45Okay.
07:46You know,
07:46if Boston's like New York,
07:48it can probably say anything on the radio.
07:49Pretty much.
07:51I just think that
07:52he was unnecessarily cruel
07:54and condescending to the media,
07:56which I always looked at the media
07:58as the conduit to the fans.
08:00And if he's treating us like this,
08:02it's basically he's treating
08:03the fans like that
08:04because he's not giving the information
08:05that the fans want to know.
08:08As far as how he is as a man,
08:10I'm not going to judge him.
08:12I know there's been,
08:13you know,
08:14with the 24 year old girlfriend.
08:15Yeah,
08:16I don't want to,
08:16I don't,
08:17yeah,
08:17his qualities as a man,
08:18but I want to ask you something
08:19about the way he treated the media
08:21because the more I hear about people
08:23that were around it,
08:24from people in the building
08:26to the media,
08:27I'm wondering how much of this,
08:30and I swear to God,
08:31I think this is true.
08:32How much of that is that
08:34he isn't smart
08:35and he didn't know
08:37how to deal with you
08:39and like he didn't,
08:41so his whole defense mechanism.
08:43It was arrogance.
08:44It was arrogance.
08:45He prepared,
08:46he was smart enough,
08:46he just didn't care,
08:47didn't believe.
08:48No,
08:48but to be able to share,
08:49I understand this arrogance,
08:51but a lot of time arrogance comes
08:53not from a place of confidence,
08:55if that makes any sense.
08:56It's like you're cloaking
08:58your inadequacies with arrogance
09:03in that like,
09:05you know a smart person
09:07when you hear them,
09:08they can talk
09:09and it's part of life,
09:11it's part of being smart,
09:12communicating ideas.
09:14You know,
09:15you don't go to a salesman
09:16and they have a great product
09:17and they just go to you
09:18like the best salesman
09:19in the world
09:19and he's like,
09:20hey,
09:20dumbass,
09:21like buy it.
09:23Like,
09:23you know,
09:23there's ways of talking
09:25and communicating.
09:27I just wonder
09:27if he's lacking,
09:30like I wonder
09:31if that arrogance
09:32was a cloak
09:33over some of his inadequacies.
09:36That's all.
09:36the way I would answer
09:38that one is
09:38I think
09:39as a football coach,
09:41anybody who says
09:42he's not a brilliant coach,
09:44you know,
09:44isn't paying attention
09:45or just stripping.
09:46Sure.
09:47No,
09:47no,
09:47he's a great football coach.
09:49He's like a savant.
09:50Right.
09:51Right.
09:51Right.
09:52So what I was going to add
09:53to that
09:53to call him
09:54a smart
09:55individual
09:58outside of football,
10:00I really haven't seen
10:02any indication
10:03of that
10:04that I would say,
10:04oh,
10:05this is a brilliant person.
10:07Brilliant football coach,
10:08no doubt.
10:09Brilliant person.
10:12You know,
10:12you tell me
10:13what he's shown
10:14to be
10:15like a really,
10:16really smart guy
10:17outside of football.
10:19And,
10:19you know,
10:19the way he treated me,
10:20I'll give you an example,
10:22both for my
10:22Once a Giant book,
10:25which came out
10:25a couple years ago.
10:26Great book,
10:27by the way.
10:27And for this book,
10:28thank you.
10:31You know,
10:31I got in contact
10:32with Bill
10:32each time
10:33wanting to meet
10:34with him in person
10:35to interview him.
10:37And
10:37he was still
10:38with the Patriots
10:39when I did
10:40the Giant book.
10:41And I said,
10:41Bill,
10:42I'll come meet you
10:43at two o'clock
10:43in the morning
10:44at the end of your day
10:45if that's when it ends.
10:46I'll come meet you
10:46at six o'clock
10:47in the morning
10:47if that's the beginning
10:48of your day.
10:49I'll meet you
10:49any time in between.
10:51I just need a half an hour.
10:53And he said to me,
10:54how's this?
10:55I'm much better
10:56if you email me
10:57the questions.
10:58I'll give you
10:59much better answers
11:00and I'll be much,
11:01I'll put much more time
11:02into it
11:03than if we sit
11:04in my office
11:04and you're sitting
11:05across from me.
11:06And I said,
11:07you know,
11:08I'd really like you
11:08to think about this
11:09because I always find
11:11and,
11:11you know,
11:12I think anybody
11:13would agree with this
11:13that I'd much rather
11:14do an interview,
11:15you know,
11:16face to face
11:16than on the phone
11:17or by email,
11:18certainly.
11:19And he said,
11:20I'm just telling you
11:22if you want me
11:22to help you on this book,
11:23this is how I want
11:24to do it.
11:25And,
11:26you know,
11:26something was better
11:27than nothing.
11:27And I asked,
11:29I sent him 15 questions
11:30and he sent me back
11:31five pages of answers.
11:33I mean,
11:33it was great.
11:34It was in depth.
11:36It was very thoughtful.
11:37But,
11:37you know,
11:38to me,
11:38that told me a lot
11:39about him,
11:39that he was just
11:40more comfortable
11:41sitting in front
11:42of his computer
11:42than sitting in front
11:43of me.
11:43And I didn't necessarily
11:44take that personally.
11:46I just think
11:47that's how he was.
11:48And for this book,
11:50it was the same thing.
11:51Bill,
11:51I'll come down
11:52to Chapel Hill,
11:52I'll go up
11:53to Nantucket,
11:54you know,
11:54whatever you want
11:55to do.
11:55And he goes,
11:56let's do it
11:57like we did last time
11:58and send me an email
11:59and I'll answer him.
12:01And I think,
12:02you know,
12:02from the quote
12:03that Andrew read
12:04a few minutes ago,
12:05I mean,
12:05that was a pretty good answer.
12:06You might not want
12:07to agree with it,
12:08but I was a little
12:09taken aback
12:10by,
12:10you know,
12:11the level of despair
12:12that he was painting
12:13over what was going on
12:14with the Patriots
12:15roster at the time.
12:17And I think
12:19that said a lot
12:19about him.
12:20He's the only person
12:21I've interviewed
12:21for any of my books
12:23that just prefer
12:24to do it
12:24by email.
12:26A lot of them
12:27have said,
12:28hey,
12:28I can save you the trip.
12:29Let's do it by phone
12:30or by Zoom,
12:32you know,
12:32which oftentimes,
12:33you know,
12:34Zoom has changed
12:34the world,
12:35as you know,
12:35and oftentimes,
12:37you know,
12:37sitting in front
12:37of your computer,
12:38but able to look
12:39at somebody
12:40is as good as.
12:42Yeah,
12:42and you're having
12:42a conversation,
12:43which is,
12:44you know,
12:45to someone
12:46who interviews people,
12:47that's,
12:48I mean,
12:49you need that.
12:49I mean,
12:50you can ask follow-ups,
12:51and if someone
12:53isn't comfortable
12:54with their intelligence,
12:56they maybe don't
12:58want to hear
12:59those follow-ups.
13:00They don't want
13:01to be put on the spot.
13:02They're afraid
13:03they're going to say
13:04something that makes
13:05them look bad
13:06or makes them look dumb
13:08because they don't
13:09have the confidence
13:09to have a conversation,
13:12which I would argue
13:13is part of being human
13:15and necessary.
13:17Do you think
13:17that's Bill's issue,
13:18though?
13:18Confidence
13:18when it comes
13:19a conversation?
13:20Yes.
13:21Because I find him
13:22to be the most
13:22disciplined speaker
13:24I've ever come across.
13:26Right,
13:26but I think
13:27that's part of
13:27what I'm saying
13:28is that it's,
13:29it's,
13:29it's,
13:30he's disciplined
13:31by necessity,
13:32if that makes
13:33any sense to anyone.
13:34You know,
13:35Fred,
13:35I want to say this,
13:36that you found
13:39that the best answers
13:40that Bill ever gave
13:41at his press conferences
13:42was when you asked him
13:43about the history
13:44of the tight end
13:44or the long snapper
13:45and he'd go on forever,
13:46but anything
13:48that would you consider
13:51really newsworthy,
13:53he would either be
13:55condescending
13:56or dismissive
13:57in his answer.
13:58And I agree
13:59with you,
13:59Fred.
14:00I think that,
14:01I wouldn't say
14:02it's a lack
14:02of confidence.
14:03I just think
14:04it's a lack
14:06of being comfortable
14:07having to answer
14:09questions that
14:10either causes him
14:13to show a little bit
14:14of his human side
14:15or go in depth
14:17and reveal information
14:18that he doesn't want to.
14:20I think he's very
14:20protective of that
14:21and he's not,
14:22I don't think he's
14:23savvy enough
14:24or well-spoken enough
14:25to give an answer
14:28that would satisfy people
14:30even though in his mind
14:32he's not really
14:32giving away information,
14:34if that makes sense.
14:34It does,
14:35it makes total sense.
14:36We're on the same page.
14:38Yeah,
14:38I absolutely think so.
14:40Gary,
14:41good job,
14:42Adam,
14:42booking Gary.
14:43I love Gary Myers.
14:44The book is
14:45Brady vs. Belichick,
14:47The Dynasty Debate.
14:48There's a lot more
14:49to get into,
14:49unfortunately.
14:50We're constrained
14:51by time and commercials.
14:53But Gary,
14:54maybe we could have you
14:55on again soon.
14:56We appreciate it.
14:58Thanks as always
14:58for the time.
14:59Hey, Fred,
14:59I'll just say this,
15:00by the questions
15:01that you and Andrew asked,
15:02it's clear in Boston
15:05there's still much more
15:06of a fascination
15:06with Belichick
15:07than there is
15:09with Tom Brady
15:10and understandably so.
15:11Well, yeah,
15:11Brady is out there.
15:13Brady,
15:13you know,
15:14is bored.
15:15Well,
15:16but he's out there speaking.
15:18I mean,
15:19there's no,
15:20he's,
15:21forget it.
15:21There's not time,
15:22but believe me,
15:24Brady's Brady.
15:25Belichick is,
15:26the way that he was
15:28just put on a pedestal
15:29around here,
15:30which I never thought
15:30was deserved
15:31other than him being
15:32a great football coach,
15:33but this whole notion
15:34he was a genius,
15:35I think is fascinating
15:37that now it's coming out
15:38and I'm hearing from people
15:39like in the organization,
15:41like this guy's
15:42not a genius,
15:43he's a football savant
15:45and there's a difference.
15:46All right,
15:46Gary Myers,
15:47book Brady vs. Belichick
15:49comes out September 16th.
15:50Look forward to talking
15:51to you again.
15:51Best of luck,
15:52Gary.
15:52For all the latest
15:53from the Sports Hub,
15:54download the app
15:55at 98.5thesportshub.com.
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