Brady vs Belichick by Gary Myers, review

The question of who deserves more credit—head coach or quarterback—has animated NFL debates for decades. Nowhere has it loomed larger than in New England, where Bill Belichick and Tom Brady built the most successful dynasty in modern football.

Brady vs Belichick by Gary Myers explores the mechanics of that 20-year run. Belichick drafted Brady in the sixth round, made him a starter after Drew Bledsoe’s injury in 2001, and built elite defenses around him, particularly in the early years. Brady responded by winning six Super Bowls with the Patriots, then one more with Tampa Bay after leaving Foxborough. Belichick, meanwhile, stayed on in New England until 2023, making the playoffs just once post-Brady.

Myers speaks to numerous players, coaches and insiders – many with strong opinions on who mattered more. Was it Brady’s ability to find the weak spot in a defense, or Belichick’s skill in drawing up the plan to expose it? Did “Spygate” and “Deflategate” tilt the scales in either direction? And is it even possible to disentangle individual contributions in a sport built on interdependence?

The book doesn’t pretend to offer a definitive answer, but the debate is the point.

Title: Brady vs Belichick
Author: Gary Myers
First published: St Martin’s Press, 2025
Buy the Book: Amazon US | Amazon UK*

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THE AUTHOR

Gary Myers has covered the NFL for more than 45 years, first as a Giants and then Cowboys beat writer and later as an NFL columnist. Brady vs Belichick is his seventh book, following titles such as Once A Giant (2023), Coaching Confidential (2012) and Brady Vs Manning (2015).

QUOTES

Players dressed in the dated locker room at the stadium and drove one mile to practice by making a right turn on Route 1 and a right turn on North Street. The sight of quarterbacks Bledsoe and Zolak in the front seat and their offensive line piled into the back of their pickup truck was an attention grabber for local residents. Some players tossed their shoulder pads into the trunks of their cars while others navigated the short distance wearing the pads. After practice, it was not uncommon for players, all sweaty from two hours on the field, to not even remove their pads before getting into their $80,000 cars for the ride back. A post-practice Friday tradition was stopping for a Big Mac and fries at McDonald’s on Route 1 on the return to the stadium to celebrate the end of the week. Yes, this was the NFL.

Except for [Patriots QB coach Dick] Rehbein. He was so thrilled when Belichick drafted Brady that he called his wife, Pam, to tell her. “Twenty years from now, people will know the name Tom Brady,” he said to Pam. It didn’t take that long. Sadly, he didn’t live to experience that himself. Rehbein was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy in 1988 and had a pacemaker inserted in his chest. In August 2001, he passed out after working out on a treadmill, was taken by ambulance to Mass Gen-eral, and given a stress test the next day. He lost consciousness taking the stress test and could not be revived. Rehbein died on August 6, 2001, a couple of weeks into Brady’s second training camp.

“Hey, would you be willing to give up two, maybe three other Su-ser Bowls, for just that one?” Eli asked. “Yeah, probably. I’d rather have won five Super Bowls and won that one than have won seven,” Brady said. Trading three of his Lombardis in exchange for Super Bowl XLII illustrates how desperately Brady wanted that game.

REVIEWS

This is Gary Myers’ seventh football book, and it reflects the strengths of his long career: access, anecdotes, and a fast-moving narrative. Many key figures, from Bill Parcells to Devin McCourty, offer first-hand insight, and Belichick himself agreed to be interviewed for the book, a notable coup.

While Brady vs Belichick delivers some fresh perspectives, it doesn’t fully commit to its own premise. Rather than dissecting the dynamics between quarterback and coach, the book often retraces the well-told story of the Patriots dynasty. Admittedly that’s a good story: a football partnership unlike any other that eventually fractured along the fault lines created by two enormous egos. However, readers looking for a definitive account may be better served by Seth Wickersham’s It’s Better to Be Feared.

That’s not to say this isn’t worth your time if you’re a fan, but a more analytical structure, focusing on specific themes like organizational power, quarterback development, or roster control, might have deepened the book’s impact.

One omission worth noting: there’s no list of sources, which feels like a missed opportunity to point interested fans to further reading.
Shane Richmond, Pigskin Books

Myers winds his way through tales of the dynasty in a leisurely way, jumping around a bit in the process. Perhaps the biggest problem with the book is that the premise expressed in the title is unanswerable. Basketball coach John Wooden once summed up his thoughts on such as things by saying, “No coach can win without talent, but some coaches can’t win with it.” In other words, it takes coaches and players working together in order to have a chance at something special. The answer to the “Brady or Belichick” question – who was more responsible – depends more on your orientation than anything else, and we know that from page one. I would guess this won’t change many minds, either way.
Budd Bailey, The Sports Bookshelf

There are no statistics that lend themselves to Myers’ made-for-sports-talk-radio debate, so he pens what is essentially a dual biography, retelling familiar anecdotes about pre-Patriots Belichick coaching the Cleveland Browns, Brady being “an afterthought sixth-round” draft pick, and their many shared victories. More than once, he strays far from his ostensible point, recounting Donald Trump’s apparent friendships with the coach and player and airing Tom Brady Sr.’s opinions on Netflix’s ribald roast of his son and Belichick’s harsh treatment of “Tommy.”
Kirkus Reviews

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