No one understands the inner workings of the New England Patriots better than Seth Wickersham.
The ESPN senior writer authored the New York Times Best Seller It’s Better to Be Feared: The New England Patriots Dynasty and the Pursuit of Greatness. Recently, Wickersham and Wright Thompson, and Don Van Natta Jr. collaborated on an ESPN+ story about the final days of Bill Belichick’s Patriots.
We caught up with Wickersham to discuss the article and the end of the greatest dynasty in modern sports.
Note: This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
Awful Announcing: When did you guys first come up with the idea to do this story?
Seth Wickersham: “It was pretty late in the season. (Thompson) is my best friend. He’s helped me through every story I’ve ever done on the Patriots in my entire career. Hopefully, I’ve helped him through a lot of his stories, too, just having that running dialogue and that conversation. He helped me a lot with my book, just talking through problems.
“With Wright, we have conversations that best friends have but with stories. This story arrived as an output of conversations rather than a decision that we’re going to pursue this.”
With three people involved, how did you guys split up the work?
“Don helped report it. I’ve worked with Don for a long time now. We’ve co-written a lot of stories on the NFL and a lot of investigative pieces. Any story is better with his help. He’s just such a fantastic reporter. Wright Thompson, we’ve known each other since college (at Missouri). I didn’t know whether I had more to say about the Patriots. I found what was happening interesting, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell a story. The more Wright and I talked, the more he saw things I had forgotten or hadn’t noticed.
“We decided to try and write it together and report it together. We would mostly just send each other pieces of the story and then ask the other one to write-through whatever it was that we had written or edited so it felt like the story had one voice. That’s kind of the similar process that I do when I co-author stories with Don. It works really well.”
The Patriots have a reputation of being a tight-lipped organization. How were you able to overcome some of those challenges?
“Yes, they’ve been buttoned up in some ways. And in other ways, they haven’t been at all. They’ve given a lot of access for documentaries, books, and articles. A lot of people have come in and out of there. They’ve had such a unique run. In some ways, it’s easier to find out what’s going on behind the scenes than it is to find out who has pulled a hamstring. They used to be a lot more secretive than they have been (recently).”
What do you consider to be the most interesting thing about your article?
“How this stuff is all interconnected. This is the greatest dynasty in modern NFL history. I’ve been fascinated by it my entire professional career. I graduated from college in 2000 and was hired at ESPN The Magazine. One of the first stories I did was about a fellow 2000 graduate, Tom Brady, who was getting his break in 2001. Watching (the dynasty) rise, then plateau, and rise again was fascinating.
“When we were looking to do something on how the final chapter of this was ending, I think it was important to not lose sight of Brady’s role in it. Bob Kraft saying: ‘Bill (Belichick) told me he couldn’t play anymore. Then he goes out and wins the f****** Super Bowl.’ Obviously, things have happened in New England since Brady left that have influenced how it finally ended.”
How could someone as smart as Belichick be so wrong about Brady in 2020?
“Remember that (Brady) wanted to go to the 49ers. He wouldn’t have had a free-agency tour if they were interested. It’s his childhood home. His parents could drive to games for the first time since he was in high school. The Niners decided to stick with Jimmy Garoppolo. Jon Gruden, with the Raiders, he passed on him. They all look like fools because of how successful (Brady) was. But of all people, Robert Kraft and Bill Belichick should have known better than anyone that it doesn’t work to underestimate Tom Brady, and yet they did.”
In the story, Kraft mockingly called Belichick “the great, intelligent man” in private. How did this relationship turn so sour?
“That was the relationship that was left: this dynamic of the two guys who made the decision to let Brady go, even if Belichick drove it a little bit more than Kraft. They were both involved with it. They both signed off on it. I wrote a book on the Patriots. I had a lot of examples of Kraft talking about Bill in blunt ways. He called him the biggest f****** a***** in my life in 2017. He called him an idiot savant at one point because he was like, ‘I gave him this opportunity.’ He was the one who gave Bill this lifeline to get out of the Jets.
“I think that Kraft has felt that managing Belichick isn’t always easy, that sometimes Bill didn’t show him the respect that he felt he deserved. But he certainly was in no rush for life after Belichick. It was only post-Brady. I think that even if they were sick of each other for a long time, it obviously reached another level.”
What was perhaps the strangest thing about the 2023 season?
“They haven’t played well on offense for two years. Bill knows that. The question was: Is Mac Jones the quarterback of the future? From our reporting, Bill looked at moving him in the offseason. Not saying that he wanted to move him, but he entertained the idea. Ownership preferred to see how Jones played with a new offensive coordinator in Bill O’Brien. The Patriots were bad on offense all year. People wondered why Belichick kept Jones in there when clearly he was broken, his confidence shattered, and he was just ineffective.
“Belichick benched him in a weird moment at the end of the game against the Colts in Germany, and let Bailey Zappe quarterback the final drive to try to save the game. When do you when you see the starter pulled for a two-minute drill on the last drive of the game? There are people close to Bill who viewed it as him kind of sticking it to the Krafts. I don’t know if that’s what he was doing exactly. I’m just saying that that was kind of the perception of people around him.”
At what point do you think Belichick knew it was over for him in New England?
“Sometime in December I think he knew that this was probably it. Obviously, his job security had been a topic of conversation all year. The Krafts had not made a statement, but it seemed like there were leaks against him. It seemed like they were coming out of the Kraft inner circle. I think he felt like what he had built was being eroded by ownership. I think that in December is when he knew that he was going to be coaching somewhere else next year.”
Where do you think Belichick will coach next?
“I really don’t know. It’s interesting. He has the greatest résumé of any free-agent coach in modern NFL history. There are already teams that are interested in him. I think an ideal spot for Bill would be similar to what Brady found in Tampa Bay, where you have a team that’s talented and needs that presence of authority, greatness and work ethic to help get them over the hump.”
What is your next book about?
“I have a book on quarterbacks that I’m working on. It has taken a lot of time. I’ve done a ton of travel for it. It’s a big project. It’s a big lift. (It’s coming out) in 2025.”
