Tom Brady retired Tuesday after 22-seasons as an elite, Super Bowl winning quarterback. ESPN reporter Seth Wickersham and author of the book, It's Better to Be Feared: The New England Patriots Dynasty and the Pursuit of Greatness, is here this morning to talk about it.
In Wickersham’s portrait of Brady in the book - from his childhood in northern California to his challenging years at the University of Michigan to his astonishing early superstardom in the NFL―that the source of the Patriots’ sheer endurance comes into focus. Even as he navigated an improbable rise to fame, Brady was driven by a totalizing ambition to be great, not as an endpoint, but as an ever-unfolding process.
Sustaining greatness, however, came with a price. Wickersham reveals, to an extent no other journalist has, the clashes among the coach, the quarterback, and the owner, Robert Kraft―conflicts that resulted in the team’s best performances but also, eventually, the dissolution of the dynasty itself.
