It's Better to Be Feared: The New England Patriots Dynasty and the Pursuit of Greatness [Paperback]

NOW WITH A NEW EPILOGUE ON THE 2021 SEASON AND TOM BRADYS BRIEF RETIREMENT [A]n honest, sprawling, meticulously reported, and beautifully written portrayal of perhaps the greatest and probably the most unlikely dynasty in modern professional sports . . . [Wickersham] draws richly detailed portraits of Brady, Belichick, the dynastys third constant in owner Robert Kraft, and how their personalities and relationships changed through the years . . . [A] superlative sports book full of intimate, fly-on-the-wall reporting, savvy insights and deft, page-turning writing. . . . Chapter after chapter, the author takes the reader inside the Patriots locker and trainers rooms, into coaches meetings, into the huddle and onto the line of scrimmage. Theres plenty of eavesdropping on the NFL owners contentious meetings with Commissioner Roger Goodell, too. The result is the best picture Ive ever encountered of what the cutthroat, multibillion-dollar world of NFL football is actually like. [T]he best book written about the Patriots to date. It encompasses the entirety of the Bill Belichick-Tom Brady dynasty: nine AFC championships and six Super Bowl championships. It delves deeply into the histories of Belichick, Brady, Robert Kraft, and several important figures of the dynasty: Julian Edelman, Josh McDaniels, Malcolm Butler, Peyton Manning, Roger Goodell, Eric Mangini, and many more. The good, great, bad, and worse are covered here, but not in a scandalous way, and not in a way that wastes extra time on extraneous stories. The focus of the book, and the fact that Wickersham has been covering the team and league since the dynastys advent, make it special. The book consistently delivers that type of fly-on-the-wall access, taking the reader to seemingly impenetrable places . . . Reporters have breathlessly covered the Patriots over the years, leaving little room for new reveals, but Wickersham advances the ball with anecdotes that unpeel the personalities of the franchiselӷ