The Birth of the Patriots Dynasty: Episodes 1 & 2 w/ "Those Guys"

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We are those guys.

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It is Alex Hardy, Nick Ferguson with you.

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If you're hearing the music, if you're seeing the hat, we got a special edition of those guys coming your way over the next few weeks.

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Nick Ferguson, you came to me, I'm the Die Hard Patriots fan, but you came to me with watching Dynasty, the new Patriots peel behind the curtain documentary on Apple TV, Apple Plus, and uh, yeah, I'm curious why you were asking me to do this.

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And sort of your emotions around reliving some of the glory days, um, during your NFL career, playing this Patriots team.

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Well, you're talking about, uh, the Patriots, Tom Brady, but this was a team that Drew Bledsoe led, and all of a sudden it was changed by, as the Patriots would describe, a scrawny little kid out of Michigan who ran around like a baby giraffe.

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And 20 plus years later, he's a freaking GOAT.

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So, yeah, uh, it's amazing and the crazy thing about it, Alex, to know that as a player, you want to be a part of NFL history.

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Yeah.

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I was a part of NFL history in a way that I did not expect.

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But yes, watching the dynasty and everything we know, we come to know about that organization.

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Uh, it really tells the inner story of what it takes to play in this league and the ups and downs of what players go through.

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Now the story that's well documented is how Tom Brady gets there and the success that they had over 20 years and I'm sure what everyone watching this documentary or listening to us on the pod are most looking forward to is how things fall apart because we build people up, um, this team built itself up and just over the course of time.

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Things started to weather and deteriorate.

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So we're going to get to that Tom Brady debut against your New York Jets with you on the opposite sideline, but a couple of points that I want to make about this podcast, and then we're just going to dive right in, we're going to be doing two episodes at a time.

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So today you'll hear us recap episodes one and two as.

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Apple Plus puts out two episodes at a time, will finish the doc, and kind of react to how everything kind of pieced together.

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So, I think it's amazing that they got the clearance for Queen, first of all, who knew Apple had, you know, the money to pay for a song like that, right? But the premise being that this team gets put in the pressure cooker.

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And the one quote that kind of opens this documentary as we look at a fast forward type of way of the start of the franchise, the end of the franchise, Dynasty itself, the quote, Nick, you're the hero long enough to become the villain.

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Absolutely.

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I mean, uh, great Harvey Dent quote from The Dark Knight.

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And it is, it is true.

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And when you look at this documentary, the first two episodes, it personifies that.

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Yeah.

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Tom Brady is this scroney rookie kid that the Patriots Quarterback Drew Bledsoe and the defenders on that team and they had some quality home front defenders they treated Tom like like crap and the idea was that but Tom wasn't gonna make this team and Drew Bledsoe did not fear Tom Brady because he had a connection with Robert Krapp, right? That was his guy.

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There was no way things were gonna change until they did Alex And you're right, I played in that game was right after 9 11 and a lot of players didn't know to play or not.

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And we decided, you know, to play that game.

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We didn't play the Raiders right after 9 11 and the Patriots like two weeks later.

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So when you get to Foxborough, I mean, there are American flags waving and our country couldn't be more galvanized in that moment.

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And you're there, and we're holding up, you know, the NYPD, police hats, fireman hats.

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It was a great moment because it got everyone back to football, but more or less it took everyone's mind off of the tragedy of 9 11.

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Now, as we get into the game, there's a play.

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Drew Bledsoe was a quarterback.

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He was supposed to be that guy.

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To lead the Patriots to the promised land.

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The first hundred million dollar contract, the league's highest paid quarterback.

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So let's just dive right in.

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Bloodso drops back, rolls to his right, tucks the football to take off, and what happens at the line of scrimmage? Who's there to meet him? Well, I mean, he's flushed out out of the pocket.

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You had Abraham coming from the right.

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Sean Ellis coming from the left.

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He gets outside.

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What a defense that was, by the way.

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Side note.

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He gets outside, and I'm thinking, okay, well, Bledsoe doesn't look like he is trying to really get out of bounds.

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And he wasn't a Mike Rubega, Cam Newton type of guy.

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Are you sure? Yeah, so he wasn't, he wasn't that fast.

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So you just see Mo Lewis come out of nowhere and just lay this massive hit on him.

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And then all of a sudden, the crowd went deadly silent.

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As Drew Bledsoe lying on the ground, and we didn't really know what was going on, and obviously, you thinking the size of Mount Lewis, being a linebacker coming from that depth and that speed, I just thought it was a concussion.

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Now, when you get the, the, the emergency trucks out there on the field, and then now he's gone, and then you find out, he had a collapsed lung, and he was bleeding internally, and he almost died.

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That, that made a lot of people really Really reflect on, you know, their football career.

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Is this the thing for them? Because, you never think about that as a player.

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That you can get injured in that way.

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That threatens your life.

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Right.

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There was a lot of that going on.

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But then, this scrawny little kid comes in.

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Now, mind you, this is, this is my first year with the Jets.

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Right.

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And understanding that Jets, Patriots rivalry.

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It wasn't there just yet.

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But after that game.

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I, I knew it all too well, so this kid comes in, and defenders are thinking like, who is this strong, scrawny backup quarterback, and then who would know that he would go on to be what he became, which is a Hall of Fame GOAT, and that's uh, Tom Brady.

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Now, I'll, we'll stay on the game for just a little bit longer, because you're there Foxborough Stadium, and I mean, your impressions of, there's no, there's no game plan for the backup coming in, right? I mean, you're, you're all honed in on Drew Blood.

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So how does that sort of change? And ultimately in a game that, you know, you end up on the short, the short end of Nick, you lose that game to Tom Brady.

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Well, thank you for reminding me of that.

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Yeah, my pleasure.

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My pleasure.

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There is a rematch later in the year.

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We'll get to that too.

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Well.

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Yeah, that was the whole thing.

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Like, you practice all week preparing for one guy, and you know the game plan.

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When the backup comes in, and we see this a lot, usually the backup has a lot of success against a team that did not have a lot of film on them.

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Like, I mean, you can go to Michigan and film and watch them, but they were not running the same type of offense, the same type of plays with the same type of players.

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So yeah, Tom came in and provided somewhat of a spark, uh, in that particular game, and it was kind of like a slap in the face to us.

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Like, like this guy, who is a backup, who doesn't really physically look like an NFL quarterback.

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He just beat us! Right? So that, that only intensified the rivalry.

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And like I said, on the bus, on the plane, flying back to New York, I really understood from the veteran players what that meant.

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Robbery was like, like, obviously you had the whole Bill Parcells, Bill Belichick thing.

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Uh, uh, Bill Belichick leaving the Jets.

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So you had that part of it that I didn't experience.

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But after losing to Tom Brady, yeah, I was pissed off.

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Yeah, we're less than two years removed from, and this isn't in the documentary, but you and I know this.

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We're less than two years removed from Bill Belichick.

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I resign as H.

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C.

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of N.

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Y.

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J.,

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written on a cocktail napkin.

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Because he wanted to get out from under Bill Parcells and that relationship between those two that spanned over two Super Bowl championships with the Giants, Parcells obviously, uh, coaching in New England and then going to the Jets, I mean, Parcells was the first guy that, that Kraft hires and watches Balichek work under him.

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And then ultimately getting him to come back at the expense of the New York Jets.

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So the rivalry comes on the field, right, with the devastating hit from Mo Lewis and ultimately losing that game.

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But prior, that rivalry is between two men, Bill Parcells and his protege Bill Belichick.

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Um, and mentioning Bill Belichick here, I think is my favorite, um, two shots, like back to back cuts, uh, from the first episode of Dynasty.

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Tom Brady, after the game, it's not the first time that we see him on camera talking about this doc talking in the documentary, But, he basically says to the camera, I knew, even after winning the game, and not knowing, you know, the severity of Drew Blood so entirely, I know my coach, Bill Belichick.

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I know I'm only the starter for next week.

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We're only guaranteed week to week.

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And cut to, Bill Belichick sitting down on the chair, And cracking his neck.

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As Tom is describing what it's like playing for Bill Belichick and only knowing that your job is guaranteed one week at a time.

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Now, there's a devastating injury to the quarterback, but Nick, that's not a philosophy that Tom Brady and Bill Belichick only hold.

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That's, that's the National Football League.

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You're only guaranteed one week at a time, right? Well, that's kind of the idea.

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And, you know, the fact that I played for Bill Parcells.

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For me, it's almost like playing for Bill Belichick.

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Because that's where Belichick received a lot of his coaching, his philosophy.

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Absolutely.

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Yeah, and that was one of those things.

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I mean, Parcells would put a lot of pressure on you.

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And it was a week to week thing.

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It's almost like being in college all over again.

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Your scholarship was year to year.

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So with Parcells, as it were, with Bill Belichick, it was a week to week thing.

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Even Laurie Malloy said himself, Well, you know what? Tom is just holding down the fort until their quarterback, Drew Blesso, comes back.

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That's right.

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And when Blesso comes back, Tom is taking his ass back to the bench.

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That was kind of the idea and that's what we thought about as, uh, as players at Fake with Habit.

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That's not how it worked out.

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But just imagine this, Alex.

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Being in that quarterback room, knowing as though you were the hundred million dollar quarterback that got injured, this young, scrawny guy came in And you still couldn't get your job back when, once you were cleared to be healthy.

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Just think about that dynamic and what it was like for those two guys trying to interact in that quarterback role.

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Almost unheard of, and it, you know, I'm going to save this point, but just to start thinking about it.

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It reminds me a lot of the 49ers situation ending up with Brock Purdy.

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Um, but I think I want to put a pin in that because of kind of the gravitas that comes with one quarterback versus another.

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Whether it's draft capital, how much money you spent on him, versus, you know, a rookie, or in Tom Brady's case, a second year guy still on that rookie deal.

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So, right, Drew Bledsoe, fortunately, almost incredibly, does get cleared to come back.

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You know, the, there were the highs and lows kind of in between that time.

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Um, where, where Brady, you know, they, they beat Peyton Manning and the Colts.

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Shout out the old AFC rivalry.

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Uh, it was still the East, right? Cause we went North, East, Central, West.

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Um, you know, uh, he, Brady kind of pilots the, the team as best as they can.

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And you sort of see this along the way in the storytelling.

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It's like they beat the Colts and then Ty Law has a house he can sell to Tom Brady.

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You know, they beat the Chargers a few weeks later, and lawyer Molloy describes having dinner with Tom, Ty Law, and himself.

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Like, oh, Tom gets to have dinner with, with the guys now, right? Uh, Drew Bloodso's cleared to return, uh, in the middle of the season.

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And the one note that I wrote down watching this, when was the last time, I don't recall ever a press conference from a National Football League team where you have the quarterback back? And the team physician in the white coat, just the two of them sitting there, no coach, no GM, no Robert Kraut.

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Uh, what, what hap, why aren't we seeing, you know, guys in white coats doing press conferences anymore, Nick? What, what happened there? Well, those were the early days of the, the NFL.

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And things, as we know now, they've progressed, they have, uh, changed.

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And at, at that, at that point, that was kind of a individual issue.

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With Drew Bledsoe being injured in this level of health, like today, that press conference would take place at the team facility with the trainer, with the GM, with the head coach.

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But those were the early days of media.

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And once again, we know Bill Belichick wasn't a guy who wanted to be the center of attention.

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You know, he doesn't even do it before he left the Patriots and he definitely did do it now, but that was just kind of viewed as an individual thing.

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And that should have been the writing on the wall.

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For Drew Bledsoe saying, okay, I'm just out here by myself with the doctors.

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There's no representation from the team.

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That should have been the first indicator to him that Bill Belichick had already kind of sided with Tom Brady over him.

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That's fascinating.

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I hadn't really thought of that point, but you're right.

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Bledsoe's put on an island, and at this point, it really only seems like Robert Kraft is the only man left in his corner.

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Um, you know, Kraft is very emotional talking about that relationship, you know, like the fourth son, uh, Drew Bledsoe was.

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And it got me to thinking about, we're going to get to this later on, but I'm sure Tom Brady winning football games for this team early on in his career, his relationship with Robert Kraft starts off kind of as a contentious point because Kraft, you know, seldom, you know, he, he, he always allowed Belichick for 20 years to make the football decisions, but.

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Here's Robert Kraft coming down from the owner's box out onto the practice field asking Bill Belichick What you know, what's the deal with Drew Bledsoe? I mean, I think his quote was something along the lines of you know, I was I was in agony I thought that it wasn't fair how this situation played out Ultimately acquiescing to his head coach.

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Listen, if this is the way it's gonna be it just needs to be right If Bill doesn't want you to start, Drew, then that's what's best for you, and that's what's best for the team.

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And at that point, when Tom Brady is named the starter, we immediately go back to Bernie Kosar and the Cleveland Browns with Belichick, which, I'm not watching football at that point, but I think what was kind of surprising for me was that at this time in 2001, You know, I thought, I thought the time with the Cleveland Browns was centuries ago, right? Like, you look at how they look in the early 90s, and you know, it's only six years ago at this point in 1995 when he's fired by the Browns, in large part with how he treated Kozar.

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So we're not that far removed From Belichick, making a decision at quarterback, not having right the solution, and it causing him his job.

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So when you're in that situation, going against the suggestions of ownership, and having a 6th round, 2nd year player, as your future at the position, at 100 million dollars, and your star quarterback, that's a huge leap of faith that, You know, Bill Belichick is taking for the second time in his career as a head coach.

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Well, Alex, if you really think about it, that was, that move was kind of the birth of what we know today as being the Patriot way.

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And what that is, is that moving on from players, while they're still in their prime, trying to get cap value for those particular players, but just kind of moving on from them.

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Like, you're bringing up the Bernie Kosar thing.

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I mean, it was unfortunate for Bernie.

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Having that injury and he was like a homegrown talent and the fans didn't really like it.

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But when you look at Drew's situation, you know, and you look at Tom, because Tom was on a rookie deal, it allowed the team to retain a lot of their talent because think about all over the years, they've had a lot of cast off from other teams because they were able to stay under the salary cap because Tom's.

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Payment as a quarterback never balloons to some of what we see right now.

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So what we were privy to was the birth of the Patriots way and Drew got the bad part of it just like Bernie did.

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But the only part is that Tom, the quarterback in waiting.

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They didn't have a backup for him, right? So that's why things went bad for Art Modell and it went bad and sour for Bill Belichick.

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But if there was a Tom Brady in that time period.

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Things would have been entirely different, so That's, that's really interesting, and where episode 1 ends is Tom Brady's name the starter, and again, just a few weeks prior, Tom Brady said, My job is only guaranteed week to week, and Bill Belichick says, Tom is the starter.

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So, they go out at 5 and 5 to play the St.

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Louis Rams, who, you know, will become important later on in the season, but They lose a close game and you point to Tom Brady with a pair of bad interceptions.

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He's the reason they lost that game.

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So immediately, you start to get the sentiment that Belichick might be making the same mistake.

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All over again.

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And that's where episode one ends.

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And fortunately, for those of you listening and watching those guys, we keep it moving.

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We've got another episode here for you of the Dynasty documentary on Apple Plus.

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I'm here to break down every single episode, react, and get the perspective of Nick Ferguson, who was there.

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And episode two opens Nick, with Tom Brady being selected a 199th overall.

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In the 2000 draft, it's Paul Tagliabue, and they're ringing in the new millennium for the National Football League.

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Um, and, and Kraft gives us that line that for whatever reason you keep repeating over and over again.

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I've got a young, skinny, beanpole kid, and Tom Brady in his first conversation with Robert Kraft.

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I'm the best decision your organization has ever made.

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And Kraft says from your lips to God's ears, let's see.

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And, bam, we're right back in St.

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Louis.

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I noticed that Joe Theismann, who talked about Tom Brady being drafted in the sixth round, working the NFL draft coverage, is calling this game for Monday Night Football.

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Um, and it is week 11, and I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, that's the rematch with the New York Jets.

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Sure is.

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Absolutely.

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And, you know, as, As a member of the Jets, you're looking forward to that game.

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And for me, being a reserve safety, playing on special teams, to me, I wanted a little get back.

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And I wanted to make sure that my presence was known, uh, against the New England Patriots.

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But it seems as though that year, thinking about, you know, what took place with The nine, the trade centers of 9 11 and then the Patriots and just saying the Patriots itself and thinking about our country.

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It was just wild because it seemed as though that there was divine intervention in some way.

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Pioneer are helping push the Patriots forward to carry across that narrative and it definitely played out in that game against us.

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And games leading up to that, to that rematch against the Rams in the Super Bowl.

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Uh, I misspoke.

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Week 12 was that Jets matchup, but nonetheless, um, you know, they showed a few more highlights from this one than we saw initially with True Blood.

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So I think it was just the Mo Lewis hit.

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And there were a couple of plays where you saw, you know, Brady making these, uh, these, these deep passes.

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And I couldn't see number 25 getting burned out there, so you at least escaped, you know, the wrath of Tom in this case.

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You're not immortalized in the documentary just yet, Nick, but there's still Plenty more years to come.

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It was kind of cool getting that retrospective of Tom.

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You know, some of the stuff and videos having followed his career, you know, you've seen before but the competitiveness that we saw in episode one, whether it was playing Tecmo Bowl versus racing his sister's home from church to be the first to sit on the front porch.

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That's pretty cool.

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And as a new father kind of recognizing just the importance of Family, and whether that was at church or on the baseball field, um, you know, where his three sisters were, were playing a ton of softball, Tom just stuck to it right away because it's, it's what he knew growing up with, um, the older siblings, so it's, you know, it's, it's at that point where we learn more about who Tom is, while at the same time learning who Drew Bloodso isn't, and it's the first time we see him, one of the more mercurial, you know, Interesting and less talked about people that's part of this Patriots dynasty.

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For the first time we see Ernie Adams sitting down, who I didn't even know went to high school with Bill Balichick.

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Or they knew each other since high school.

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I thought it was just more of a professional relationship.

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Um, and Ernie Adams is the one grinding tape.

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And maybe Nick, because this is something that you do, um, with the tape.

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Ernie Adams watching the film says, No, Drew Bledsoe can't be our guy, because the way that he saw it, is he kept bracing himself for that big hit.

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After what happened with Mo Lewis, his quote was, He looks like a wildebeest under attack.

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Well, I'll say this, Ernie was right watching the tape, picking up those signs from Drew Bledsoe, that he was playing more timid than aggressive.

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But, here's another approach that, Maybe the Patriots and Ernie Adams should have taken with Drew.

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Yeah, your quarterback got hit running outside the pocket.

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He didn't get hurt inside the pocket.

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So, if Drew was not releasing the ball on time, you know, moving the ball down the field, maybe the first thing, not just look at your quarterback, Look at the structure of your offensive line, because even though Tom had to play behind that same offensive line, he had his issues too, maybe not the same way like Drew had, because Drew became somewhat gunshot.

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But, Ernie picked up on that, and he picked up on it right away.

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You only do that when you can go into a situation and be very unbiased, as far as what you're looking at.

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And then, having the stones to go tell Bill Belichick and Robert Kraft, like, Look.

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We need to fix this because we have an issue.

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Drew Brees, not Drew Brees, but Drew Blesso might have been our guy before.

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He's not going to be our guy moving forward because he has these issues that he's dealing with and we're not sure if he's going to be able to overcome it.

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And I can tell you, man, from an athlete's standpoint, when something tragic like that happens to you, you can come back and repair yourself physically.

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But it's the mental part that is the most difficult to get over because I'm sure every time a defender got around Drew, the first thing he thought about was Mo Lewis and he saw number 57.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, exactly.

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And again, emphasizing he saw 57 and not 25, um, still waiting for your debut in the Doc, Nick.

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I know it's gonna happen.

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I know it's gonna happen.

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Don't put me in there, man.

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No.

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Uh uh.

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Don't put We'll see.

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There's still plenty of Broncos games yet to come in later episodes.

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There's the Week 11 win against the Saints in primetime.

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There's the Week 12 win against your Jets.

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Now that's the start of the 9 game winning streak, but at least for the end of the regular season, 6 in a row, they win their first AFC East division title in 4 years.

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They hit, uh, at 11 5 at the tiebreaker over Miami.

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Your Jets at 10 6.

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The Peyton Manning led Colts at 6 10 and those Buffalo Bills 3 13.

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It means the first home playoff game for Robert Kraft as owner, and the second home playoff game for the Patriots in 34 years as a season ticket holder prior.

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Um, the last game at this old Foxboro Stadium is such a significant one, and, you know, I take the Patriots for granted with all their success.

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Like, hey, in 96, They went to a Super Bowl in 85, they went to a Super Bowl, but I hadn't realized that they were on the road throughout all of that.

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So, how important it is to get that support from your home fan base and to deliver for your fans to give them, um, a type of game with that much incentive and that much excitement, um, to host the playoff game.

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You know, this is the first of many, many more playoff games to come at home, but I just, I was kind of shocked to hear it was their first in 30 odd years, you know, um, that's unusual.

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Listen, as a football fan, I remember Steve Grogan, the only quarterback with a neck broke, right? So, to be a Patriots fan and suffer through some of those early years watching Jim Kelly and Dan Marino destroy those Patriots teams, this was Something that those fans, almost like those Cleveland Cavaliers fans, they had been talking about for years in their family, but they had not really seen.

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So now to say that things turned around and Tom Brady was his quarterback.

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It just, it just tells you how fickle fans are because think about at the very beginning.

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How the fans reacted to Tom Brady after that Rams game when he threw a couple of interceptions.

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It was like, we got to go back to Drew and Drew thought, Hey, I was going to get my job back.

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They kept winning games and Belichick said, well, I see the future.

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I have a plan and the plan is Tom Brady.

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And the crazy thing about this is what did Drew go through right now? We haven't really embarked on everything and seeing that Drew side of it.

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What did you go through from being a starter to now watching this young kid in his rookie year lead a team that you were supposed to lead? You were supposed to take them to the promised land.

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Now you have to play second fiddle in backseat.

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To this kid, the same kid that you put the FBI, uh, I guess, paint in his shoe to paint to make his foot blue for a while, now that guy is everyone, is the guy that everyone's talking about and not you.

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Think about that and that's the part I'm interested in seeing.

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How did Drew and his wife mentally process watching someone else live the life that he was supposed to live? A lot of this defense was there in 1996, um, they reached their pinnacle.

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I mean, look, he's hurt, but he knows how good the supporting cast is around him.

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And we're about to talk about the greatness of Adam Vinatieri as well.

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This is the type of football team that you're winning six in a row with this quarterback.

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Because he's getting help around him.

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You know, they hang 44 on Peyton Manning and the Colts, not because Tom threw five or six touchdowns.

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Like it's 2007 with Randy Moss.

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Uh, like this is, this is a defensive run.

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The football team that drew blood.

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So could just have easily won six in a row with, um, you know, it's, it's, it's gotta be an interesting position that.

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Right, less than a year ago, you know, he's getting his hands on FBI ink, which I want, you know, Yeah, where'd you get that from? That's not the question for me, that's the question for you, Nick.

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Like, what kind of connections being in the NFL, like, allow you to get? Like, you've got a pal at the FBI, like, yeah, we've got this stuff lying around, no problem.

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Um, we could have used some purple dye on the morning of January 19th, 2002.

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Because the snow starts falling.

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The Patriots are hosting the Oakland Raiders and it won't stop snowing, Nick.

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Um, the impressions that you had of this game, and I can proudly say, a game that I attended.

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So, I can tell you my experience of multiple hand warmers.

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I was, again, I think 11 years old.

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11 years old at the time.

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Yeah.

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Hand warmers, snow jacket, about four or five layers, um, and I don't remember much until they made it 10 13.

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Now, watching this back again, Brady throws the early pick, they go down 13 3, and the decision that Bill tells Tom is it's time to go hurry up offense.

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And I don't remember this at all, uh, Jermaine Wiggins making that catch off the deflected ball off David Patton's hands to keep that drive alive.

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I do remember Tom running in to make it 10 13.

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They get the football back, again, on the strength of that defense.

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There's a minute 43 left in the game.

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Charles Woodson comes around from the edge.

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And, I was a fan, I didn't know the NFL rules, Nick, you did, so obviously you knew what happened on this play.

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Of course, I mean, I knew what it was, uh, a fump, right, and I was like, okay, well, wow, I mean, the, the glorious run of Tom Brady and the Patriots have come to a Trump offense, and, and Charles Woodson, Michigan on Michigan, now the Raiders get the ball back, but no one anticipated that they would go under the cover.

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And the referee would come back and say something that changed, I guess, the Raiders organization for years to come after that.

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And it was like, oh, his arm was going forward.

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It wasn't, uh, you know, a fumble.

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And I was like, what? And I mean, even the Patriots guys were shocked that the ref said that it wasn't a fumble.

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But once again, it goes back to what I said before.

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It was almost like, man, this was the year of 9 11, divine intervention, it was in the cards, and it was by design for the Patriots to win that game, and it was, that game, just think about it, it sent both of those organizations in two opposite directions, and the Raiders haven't been able to recover since.

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Right, a team that had just gone to the Super Bowl, er, Well, they're about to go to the Super Bowl, my mistake.

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Uh, this was a great Raiders team that was fully expected to win.

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You know, they, they, they didn't win the division, they were on the road.

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But, this was just kind of a nice, feel good story.

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But, Rich Gannon was an MVP player.

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Like, this is, this is the game that they should have won.

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And it, you know, looking back on it in the documentary, Tom throws a couple of F bombs.

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First, F it, that's the season.

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I can't believe I fumbled the football.

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And then after the review We didn't write the effing rule.

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So, they keep the ball.

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Adam Vinatieri sits down in the chair for the first time.

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Um, and kudos to him because you're thinking as soon as they keep that football, he immediately, they show the footage, he's watching, he gets up and he starts kicking because he says this is gonna come down to my right leg.

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It just, I, I, I have to be prepared.

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So, with the season long of 54, he kicks 45 yards in the snow.

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And Bill Belichick had to ask Ernie Adams what happened and Ernie's like, He made the field goal.

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They force overtime.

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Uh, again, this isn't, you know, butthurt Josh Allen.

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So the overtime rules are first to score with the possession.

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Uh, we, you know, so 14 plays, Tom Brady in the snow, 8 for 8 on the drive to set up Vinatieri from 25 yards out.

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The Patriots won that game.

318
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But I'd like to give credit to the Raiders for losing that game too.

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Because they call the timeout to, I don't know, is that where we got the term icing the kicker? Because it was so cold out that day? Probably.

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They call the timeout, and they give the Patriots, Vinatario was surprised.

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He's like, they gave us enough time to clear off the snow, and 25 yards out, they're good.

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And looking back, remembering this as a fan, I will always remember that game having been there, but just the magnitude of it.

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And the elements, a part of it.

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And then you get to the AFC Championship in sunny Pittsburgh a week later.

325
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And I'm just kinda like, yeah, sure, it's the game that got them to the Super Bowl.

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But at the same time, it's such an afterthought compared to what we just saw with the Raiders.

327
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And to wrap things up before we get, um, your reactions Nick, Nick before we split.

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The AFC Championship game in sunny Pittsburgh.

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Brady is injured on a lower body hit by Georgia Tech yellow jacket, leaf flowers, and we cut to credits, the first two episodes of Dynasty.

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Nick, before we split, your impressions of what you saw in these first two episodes of Dynasty.

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Um, are you upset that you weren't featured yet? We know we'll get you in there.

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Um, or anything else that, you know, changed your perception about the early days of Tom Brady and those New England Patriots.

333
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Well, I mean, I wasn't featured in the early start up of Tom Brady, so kudos to that.

334
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Obviously, when he gets to the Denver days, I had more victories against Tom in the Broncos uniform than I did in the Jets.

335
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So, I can't wait for them to show that footage.

336
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Uh, but the biggest thing is what fans did not know about the game of football.

337
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To know that the kind of, uh, I guess the inner battles that take place.

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You have the owner wanting to do one thing.

339
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The head coach wanting to do another thing.

340
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And then the players themselves on the field.

341
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That dynamic, you know, it plays out in hard knocks.

342
00:35:49,485 --> 00:35:52,64.999
But it hasn't really played out in this particular way.

343
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Because when you think about, once again, what Drew went through from a physical standpoint, but the mental part of it too.

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Those are the things that never really get highlighted, and I think in this documentary, as it moves forward, we're gonna see it play out, so I like that part being shown, and maybe it would change the impression that fans have of their favorite athlete about the game itself, but maybe some of these talking heads that are out there, maybe it would change the way that current players who are analysts look back at their careers, and they look at the game today.

345
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And look at it in a different way because there is a human element to it.

346
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We are professionals, but there's a human element to it that's never really talked about and maybe we see that play out as this uh, Dynasty documentary moves forward.

347
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He's Nick Ferguson.

348
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You can follow him at NickFerguson underscore 25 on all socials.

349
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Uh, breaking down a lot more than just a documentary.

350
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Um, you're doing your draft prep right now, I believe, in addition to, uh, filling some needs that the Denver Broncos have.

351
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Uh, maybe at the quarterback position.

352
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They might need a quarterback.

353
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I'm not sure.

354
00:37:04,600 --> 00:37:08,720
But, you can always reach out to Nick if you have any questions about your team.

355
00:37:09,020 --> 00:37:10,710
Um, he's that type of guy.

356
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I do that to him all the time with My New England Patriots, who, we'll get to it, but, um, not as bright days today as they were back in 2001.

357
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I'm sure when we meet back again, we'll do episodes 3 and 4, we'll have a little Super Bowl run, uh, to discuss, and that much more.