The Last Two Episodes of 'The Dynasty' Complete the Hatchet Job on Bill Belichick

In the end, it was just as bad as I feared it might be. If not worse. 

When that trailer first landed in November, the dreary tone of it worried me:

How do they propose to tell the tale of an unprecedented two decades of sustained excellence, and the greatest collaboration by and owner, coach and athlete in the history of sports by making it feel like The Banshees of Inisherin? ...

The thing is, even if one chooses to focus disproportionately on how it all ended - and I can't imagine why anyone would - you have to concede that while things were supposedly going so horribly wrong between Brady and Belichick, they won Super Bowl LIII. It can't be ignored that that was one of the truly great collaborations they ever had together. On the road at Kansas City in the AFC championship game, Brady led three touchdown drives in the last half of the 4th quarter and overtime. And in the Super Bowl, Belichick's defense held the then 11th most prolific offense in NFL history to 3 points and zero red zone trips.

Which is exactly what we got in Episodes 9 and 10. 

Yes, we get the Super Bowl win over the Rams. A fair amount of it, I'm happy to report. And after bashing Bill Belichick's brains out for the better part of the first nine installments, The Dynasty leans pretty heavily into how that game cemented his reputation as a genius for all time. Good for AppleTV. 

But it was way too little, too late. The whole proceeding up to that point is one long hit piece on Belichick. There's simply no other way to describe it. Filled with the sort of somber, dramatic piano music normally reserved for the darkest parts of true crime documentaries. But without Keith Morrison dropping in to lighten the mood with, "Ohhh, that pesky DNA..." In fact, the tonal shift to suddenly start crediting the head coach and GM who built the Dynasty  in the title is like if Oppenheimer was all about how he was a card-carrying Communist who tried to poison his professor, assaulted his best friend, cheated on his wife, was personally responsible for killing everyone in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and then in the last five minutes throw in a scene where he wins World War II for the good guys. 

In Belichick's case, he's portrayed as a grump who made everyone around him miserable in 2017-18. Benched Malcolm Butler for no earthly reason. Was completely unreasonable when it came to letting Alex Guerrero have free reign in his organization to run around contradicting what the $2 million training staff wanted. Was one of the 63 million people who got Donald Trump elected. And drove Tom Brady out of town with his constant criticism. This in addition to the earlier episodes that bashed him as a hypocrite, a consistent cheater, a bully, mean to Drew Bledsoe, Aaron Hernandez' unindicted co-conspirator, and damned lucky that any of his terrible decisions ever worked out. 

Whatever degree of truth there is in any of these characterizations, let me interject here and mention that in the time frame we're talking about here, the Patriots during Belichick's unholy reign of terror went 29-9, including 5-1 in the postseason, won two conference championships and that aforementioned Super Bowl.

There are two quotes in particular that tell you everything. The first is Mr. Kraft quoting Gisele at a meeting he invited the Bradys to at his house. "That effing Belichick, he doesn’t treat my Tommy like a man." A sentence which would have set a record for lack of self-awareness that will never be broken even if it wasn't spoken by a woman who tomcatted around behind her Tommy's back  with her jiu jitsu instructor. Allegedly. But if there is a way to see to it your husband is treated like a man, complaining to his boss's boss is most definitely not it.

The other comes from Danny Amendola, who is now the gold standard among former Belichick players when it comes to hating the man who made him a Super Bowl champion. Twice. 

You might've thought Ted Johnson, Asante Samuel and Cassius Marsh had nothing nice to say but can't say nothing at all. Danny Playoffs is saltier than a jumbo pretzel when it comes to his former coach. The thing is, Belichick got absolutely murdered in this town when he signed Amendola to replace Wes Welker in 2013. Even more so when he got injured in his first game, missed four of the next six, and started being called Danny Glassendola by sports radio imbeciles. But I guess making a guy rich, sticking by him in the face of a public outcry, making him a two-time champion, and bringing him to an area where he got to date Olivia Culpo will only get you so far in his estimation. 

Now that the series is over, as is my involvement in it, since I'll never give it a single re-watch, here's a partial list of Belichick's accomplishments down through the years that either never came up or only got the briefest of mentions:

• The two Super Bowl seasons of 2003 and 2004.
• The near-perfect postseason defeats of Peyton Manning's Colts.
• Beating co-MVPs in the same playoffs.
• The 21-game winning streak.
• The intentional safety that beat Denver.
• "We'll take the wind."
• "We're onto Cincinnati."
• Two comebacks from down 14-points over Baltimore thanks to the Ineligible Man formations and Edelman-to-Amendola.
• Exonerating Brady by introducing the Ideal Gas Law at the Mona Lisa Vito press conference. 
• Taking every sling and arrow fired at his team in those years without ever once letting one of his players take the blame.
• Giving credit to his players for every victory, no matter how much he was responsible.

Simply put, Belichick deserves better than to get done dirty like this.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be spending the rest of the day watching the six Super Bowls, the Do Your Jobs, the 3 Games to Glorys, and the Belichick episode of A Football Life. And hope they'll wipe the memory of this series away for good.