The Dynasty

by Jeff Benedict

Overview

*NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER*
From the #1 New York Times bestselling coauthor of Tiger Woods comes the definitive inside story of the New England Patriots—the greatest sports dynasty of the 21st century.

It’s easy to forget that the New England Patriots were once the laughingstock of the NFL, a nearly bankrupt team that had never won a championship and was on the brink of moving to St. Louis. Everything changed in 1994, when Robert Kraft acquired the franchise and soon brought on board head coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady. Since then, the Patriots have become a juggernaut, making ten trips to the Super Bowl, winning six of them, and emerging as one of the most valuable sports franchises in the world.

How was the Patriots dynasty built? And how did it last for two decades? In The Dynasty, acclaimed journalist Jeff Benedict provides richly reported answers in a sweeping account based on exclusive interviews with more than two hundred insiders—including team executives, coaches, players, players’ wives, team doctors, lawyers, and more—as well as never-before-seen recordings, documents, and electronic communications.

Through his exhaustive research, Benedict uncovers surprising new details about the inner workings of a team notorious for its secrecy. He puts us in the room as Robert Kraft outmaneuvers a legion of lawyers and investors to buy the team. We listen in on the phone call when the greatest trade ever made—Bill Belichick for a first-round draft choice—is negotiated. And we look over the shoulder of forty-year-old Tom Brady as a surgeon operates on his throwing hand on the eve of the AFC Championship Game in 2018.

But the portrait that emerges in The Dynasty is more rewarding than new details alone. By tracing the team’s epic run through the perspectives of Kraft, Belichick, and Brady—each of whom was interviewed for the book—the author provides a wealth of new insight into the complex human beings most responsible for the Patriots’ success.

The result is an intimate portrait that captures the human drama of the dynasty’s three key characters while also revealing the secrets behind their success. “The Dynasty is...[a] masterpiece...It’s a relationship book, it’s a football book, it’s a business book...you’ll just eat up these stories” (Colin Cowherd).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781982134112
Publisher:	Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	09/07/2021
Pages:	592
Sales rank:	101,172
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Jeff Benedict is the bestselling author of sixteen nonfiction books, as well as a television and film producer. His latest book, The Dynasty, is the definitive inside story of the New England Patriots under Robert Kraft, Bill Belichick, and Tom Brady. Published in 2020, it was an instant New York Times bestseller. The book is being developed into a ten-part documentary series, which Jeff is executive producing. In 2018, Jeff cowrote the #1 bestseller Tiger Woods. Jeff was an executive producer on the HBO documentary Tiger that was based on the book and aired in 2021. The book is currently being developed into a scripted series, which Jeff is executive producing. Jeff is also the executive producer on a documentary based on his book Poisoned that will air on Netflix. Jeff has been a special-features writer for Sports Illustrated, the Los Angeles Times, and the Hartford Courant, and his essays have appeared in the New York Times. His stories have been the basis of segments on 60 Minutes, CBS Sunday Morning, HBO Real Sports, Discovery Channel, Good Morning America, 20/20, 48 Hours, NFL Network, and NPR. He lives with his wife and four children in Connecticut.

Table of Contents

Prologue ix

1 End Game 1

2 Bobby 8

3 Fathers and Sons 14

4 The Long Game 22

5 Leverage 34

6 Sold! 44

7 Meet the New Boss 53

8 This Guy Is Different 69

9 Not So Fast 77

10 She 88

11 The Trouble with Contracts 100

12 New England Versus New York 109

13 You Know Me 120

14 Dear John 127

15 Getting Belichick 139

16 Tommy 153

17 Building the Core 164

18 In an Instant 175

19 Changing Places 186

20 The Perfect Storm 199

21 We Are All Patriots 208

22 Growing Pains 221

23 All in the Family 233

24 League of Their Own 244

25 A Day in the Life 257

26 Loss 268

27 Reload 278

28 Transcendence 290

29 Inconsolable 304

30 Allow Me to Reintroduce Myself 316

31 No Place Like Home 326

32 The Passing 340

33 Breaking Bad 350

34 Moving On 362

35 On To Cincinnati 375

36 The Envy of the League 390

37 New England Versos Everybody 406

38 No One Knows Where the Top Is 426

39 Lord of the Rings 440

40 Heavy is the Crown 449

41 Tension 461

42 Threading the Needle 474

43 Shuttle Diplomacy 483

44 We're Still Here 499

Epilogue 516

Acknowledgments 523

Notes 527

Index 559

Editorial Reviews

"The Dynasty is Jeff Benedict's latest masterpiece. . . . It's a relationship book, it's a football book, it's a business book. . . . I was surprised at the level of detail in Robert Kraft's quotes and his willingness to allow [the book] to go to some pretty painful places. . . . If you love football the way I do, you'll just eat up these stories."
—Colin Cowherd, The Herd

“An epic business story . . . The Dynasty goes deeper than anyone has before on the Beatles-esque collaboration among an owner, a coach, and a star player.”
—Bloomberg

“Most often in our business, there are writers and there are reporters, and rarely do the twain meet. In The Dynasty, Jeff Benedict shows he’s masterful at both. His reporting on the very well-worn (trust me) earth of the Patriots’ greatness is groundbreaking, starting with his illumination of the evening in the hospital in 2001 when Drew Bledsoe’s life was in peril and going all the way through to previously unknown details of the emotional play-by-play of Tom Brady’s departure from New England. The imagery and prose are just as strong. Such a great read from Benedict.”
—Peter King, NBC Sports, author of “Football Morning in America”

“For two decades we’ve been peering up at the castle looming over the American sportscape with the same mixture of awe, suspicion, and envy with which peasants have peered up at palisades for millennia. So when a deft and lyrical serf named Benedict slips inside, lowers the drawbridge, and waves us in to see the ramparts, towers, turrets, and castle keep where the Brady-Belichick-Kraft trinity ruled . . . how can a peasant resist?”
—Gary Smith, longtime Sports Illustrated writer and author of Beyond the Game

“This is an extraordinary book. The narrative is comprehensive, intimate, and original. I’ve watched and written about the entire Patriots dynasty, and yet this epic story provides new insights and startling details that I didn’t know. I can assure you that there’s not another Patriots book like it.”
—Michael Holley, author of Belichick and Brady and Patriot Reign

“Smart, engaging . . . Action-packed . . . Benedict has long blended two interests—sports and business—and the Patriots are emblematic of both. . . . Good reading for organization builders as well as Pats fans.”
—Kirkus Reviews

"A marvelously told story of the New England Patriots . . . This is the story of a well-run and successful business, very much like Apple or Amazon. . . . You don’t need be a sports fan to enjoy this masterpiece study of a successful sports franchise. . . . With substantial research, great attention to detail and superb writing, The Dynasty is a book worthy of the team it chronicles."
—Book Reporter

"Richly detailed . . . Benedict’s book breaks new ground in utilizing the oft-neglected vantage point of the owner’s box."
—Hartford Courant

"A page-turner for Patriots fans. There are plenty of behind-the-scenes, untold nuggets, along with more detailed versions of often-told stories that have taken place during Robert Kraft’s ownership of the team. . . . It was as if Benedict was a fly on the wall for many of these significant events, and in some cases, he was in fact present to witness some indelible moments."
—Boston Herald

"The Dynasty is an unprecedented peek behind the curtain of the Patriots’ football machine."
—Inside Hook

From the Publisher

09/04/2020

The title of the latest book by Benedict (Tiger Woods) is apt in that over the last 19 seasons, the New England Patriots have won 17 Eastern Division crowns, participated in 13 Conference championship games, including an unprecedented eight in succession, gone to nine Super Bowls and won six Vince Lombardi Trophies. This definitive look at the controversial two-decade run of success of the New England Patriots is not an exposé of scandals; while the author covers Spygate and Deflategate, he does not find much evidence of negative behavior to overshadow the team's success. The three constants in this triumphant stretch are owner Robert Kraft, coach Bill Belichick, and quarterback Tom Brady. This extensive recounting of the maintenance of the dynasty focuses largely on those three principals and their tangled interactions through interviews with each of the trio. It is a story of three-way relationships; those close and familial between Kraft and Brady, and those more distant and professional between Belichick and the other two. While the owner's son Jonathan plays a prominent supporting role in the drama, most players and assistant coaches are off stage in this account. VERDICT A well-written look of the Patriot dynasty that should be in demand by football fans, though it would not preclude a more gridiron-focused take on how the dynasty was constructed and maintained.—John Maxymuk, Rutgers Univ.-Camden Lib., NJ

Library Journal

2020-08-26
Action-packed tale of the building of the New England Patriots over the course of seven decades.

Prolific writer Benedict has long blended two interests—sports and business—and the Patriots are emblematic of both. Founded in 1959 as the Boston Patriots, the team built a strategic home field between that city and Providence. When original owner Billy Sullivan sold the flailing team in 1988, it was $126 million in the hole, a condition so dire that “Sullivan had to beg the NFL to release emergency funds so he could pay his players.” Victor Kiam, the razor magnate, bought the long since renamed New England Patriots, but rival Robert Kraft bought first the parking lots and then the stadium—and “it rankled Kiam that he bore all the risk as the owner of the team but virtually all of the revenue that the team generated went to Kraft.” Check and mate. Kraft finally took over the team in 1994. Kraft inherited coach Bill Parcells, who in turn brought in star quarterback Drew Bledsoe, “the Patriots’ most prized player.” However, as the book’s nimbly constructed opening recounts, in 2001, Bledsoe got smeared in a hit “so violent that players along the Patriots sideline compared the sound of the collision to a car crash.” After that, it was backup Tom Brady’s team. Gridiron nerds will debate whether Brady is the greatest QB and Bill Belichick the greatest coach the game has ever known, but certainly they’ve had their share of controversy. The infamous “Deflategate” incident of 2015 takes up plenty of space in the late pages of the narrative, and depending on how you read between the lines, Brady was either an accomplice or an unwitting beneficiary. Still, as the author writes, by that point Brady “had started in 223 straight regular-season games,” an enviable record on a team that itself has racked up impressive stats.

Smart, engaging sportswriting—good reading for organization builders as well as Pats fans.

Kirkus Reviews