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Dec/093
Dec/093
The Blueprint: How the New England Patriots Beat the System to Create the Last Great NFL Superpower
From Publishers Weekly
Given the almost perverse ratio of fans and media attention on the one hand (massive) to the minuscule number of NFL games (a mere 16 per team in regular season, compared to 162 in baseball), the level of attention paid to each play, press conference or trade is astounding. So when Bill Belichick took over as coach of the famously inconsistent New England Patriots in 2000 and quickly turned them into what Boston Globe sportswriter Price terms the unlikelies...
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December 19th, 2009
When I read the first chapter of this book, I thought that the book was going to be a watered down version of “Patriot Reign” by Michael Holly.
But the second chapter goes all the way back to the infamous beginnings of the New England Football team. It mentions the Boston Braves who later became the Washington Redskins. It talks about the deplorable conditions that the teams had to deal with in the early days when they didn’t have a stadium and then when they got Schaefer Stadium. It describes all the interesting characters that were on the team throughout the years.
The rest of the book goes on to cover the modern day Pats and their rise to the team they are now. Whether or not you like that Pats or Bill Belichick, it talks about his career and how he’s changed the way he’s coached and even the things he’s changed within the NFL, such as the way they choose defensive players and such, especially under the salary cap.
It does bog down a little bit but it’s still interesting and was a pretty quick read. I did like this book a lot more than Patriot Reign.
December 19th, 2009
Unfortunately, this book contains very little new material for the informed Pats, or NFL, fan. Most of this information has been written before. Too many pages spent on past Pats history, which has been chronicled elsewhere. Almost half the book is wasted on rehashing old feuds and sorry history.
In the introduction, the author says his model for this book was Moneyball, but he falls way short of that goal. Badly edited, lots of annoying errors and too many repetitive quotes used throughout the book.
Based on the title it is reasonable to expect more detail on the inner workings of the Pats — and the who, what, when, where and HOW — of their successful blueprint, but it just isn’t there.
Suggest reading Halberstam’s book for a better look at the inner workings of the Pats, if not an actual blueprint of how they conduct their business.
December 19th, 2009
The Blueprint offers a complete breakdown of the New England Patriots’ history and the foundation for the team’s current dominance. The book is well written and is a good foundation for new fans, but doesn’t offer much additional insights into the franchise beyond the well known facts. The writer’s style is a bit dry. For a more entertaining and deeper look into the New England Organization, Michael Holley’s “Patriot Reign” was far more insightful and a much more entertaining read. For a newer fan this book is great; for a die hard, lifetime fan, there isn’t much here you didn’t already know. On a personal note, a big pet peeve of mine is insufficient editing, and I found numorous spelling errors, and repeatitive thoughts through out the book, which is a bit distracting.