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12 really good new sports books

Here's a grab bag of a dozen new sports books.

3. 'Belichick and Brady: Two Men, the Patriots, and How they Revolutionized Football,’ by Michael Holley

  • By Ross Atkin

If ever a pro football coach and quarterback were joined at the hip, Bill Belichick and Tom Brady are. They have been in sync since 2001, when Belichick thrust his second-year signal-caller into the starter’s role when Drew Bledsoe was injured. The results have been spectacular as they’ve won more games than any other coach-quarterback pair in National Football League history, including four Super Bowls. Unlocking the secrets of their success will never be easy, given Belichick’s well-known reticence to open up to the media, but author Michael Holley, a former Boston Globe sportswriter, does his due diligence in exploring the Belichick-Brady dynamic through interviews with current and past Patriot players, coaches, and executives. 

Here’s an excerpt from Belichick and Brady:

“Tom Brady has expressed the sentiment many times. There is nothing the Patriots can do to surprise him anymore. He is the most grown of the grown men in the locker room these days, five months away from his thirty-seventh birthday. By March 2014, there isn’t much he hasn’t seen from the Patriots or even from the league itself.

“He understands the nature of the game, from its brutality on the field to its corporate warriors in New York, always prepared for legal combat in the name of defending the shield. He’s won more often than any player in football, and that isn’t just about appearing in five Super Bowls and eight conference title games. At the genesis of winning is an understanding of how things and people work, and that is one of his overlooked skills.”

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

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