'Duped' by 'Dynasty?' Patriots' Stars Criticize TV Show
Harrison and McCourty give it two thumbs down.
Anyone New England Patriots fan seeking relief from the franchise's ongoing rebuild could potentially turn to "The Dynasty," the Apple TV+ docuseries that provides a bittersweet, behind-the-scenes look at Foxborough's unprecedented run of prosperity at the turn-of-the center.
The series has garnered generally positive reviews but series stars Rodney Harrison and Devin McCourty are not among those authors, panning the miniseries in a recorded conversation posted on NBC Sports' football channels.
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Harrison and McCourty were two of the many prominent Patriots names interviewed for the series, which released the last of 10 episodes on Friday. New England's tally of six Super Bowls in an 18-year span was undoubtedly a team effort, but Harrison believed that the series stripped the success and failure down to the triumvirate of head coach/general manager Bill Belichick, quarterback Tom Brady, and team owner Robert Kraft.
“It just seemed so Tom-and-Bill-centric, and Kraft," Harrison, who earned two Super Bowl rings in six seasons, said. "I didn’t enjoy it. I stopped because it didn’t tell the stories. . . . It was centered around some things that I wasn’t really feeling and I just stopped watching.
"I interviewed for five or six hours I was in New York, and all they had me saying was, ‘(Bleep) ‘em all. (Bleep) ‘em all.’ Like, that’s it. That’s all I saw myself say. Like, I have a lot of input into Tom and how these guys treated me and the things that happened that led to me signing here. That was a big deal ... I wasn’t a big fan of it.”
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McCourty believed that the series was overly critical of Belichick, saying that his own confessionals recorded for the film focused not on triumphs but rather on drama like the Aaron Hernandez situation and the coach's endorsement of Donald Trump leading into the 2016 United States presidential election.
“I thought 2010 was like a changing of the guard for so many different things with New England. Like, some of the older players were gone, and it was just like every move had to be made right to try to move on and the only thing they talked about was Aaron Hernandez,” McCourt remarked. “I felt like I got kind of duped.
"I watched and I was just like, man, only things I said that could come across as negative to Bill was the only thing (used)," the 13-year Patriots and three-time champ continued. "I had different kinds of quick sentences on things, but the longest thing I talked about was 2016 with Trump ... and I thought that was probably the worst part. That everything that we all gave to the 20 years that it encompassed, they only hit anything that was negative.”
The two defenders hinted that the more uplifting Belichick stories were left on the cutting room floor: Harrison sought to focus on the head coach's successful game day planning while McCourty said a story of Belichick helping secure a commutation for William Allen, a man released from prisons 28 years into a life sentence, was also eliminated.
Even though Belichick's name has lost a little bit of value in modern Massachusetts, some, like Harrison and McCourty, are more than willing to sign his praises. Alas, those tales and more appear to be reserved for a director's cut that's likely never coming.
