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The Blueprint - How the New England Patriots Beat the System to Create the Last Great NFL Superpower (Paperback, First)
Loot Price: R428
Discovery Miles 4 280
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The Blueprint - How the New England Patriots Beat the System to Create the Last Great NFL Superpower (Paperback, First)
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List price R501
Loot Price R428
Discovery Miles 4 280
You Save R73 (15%)
Expected to ship within 10 - 15 working days
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For years, the New England Patriots were a certifiable joke of a
franchise. They were run on the cheap and were once the very
example of how not to manage a team. They hired inept coaches---one
of whom (Clive Rush) was nearly electrocuted when he grabbed a
microphone at his introductory press conference. In 1968 their
scouting director, Ed McKeever, suggested they draft a wide
receiver . . . before someone in the organization realized the
player had been dead for six months. They plucked ex-players out of
the stands minutes before kickoff---Bob Gladieux was enjoying a
beer at the game when he heard his name called over the P.A. (The
Patriots had cut a player earlier that morning and found themselves
short. Gladieux, who would go on to spend four years in the league
as a running back, made the tackle on the opening kickoff.) And
they played in a run-down stadium that was one of the worst venues
in professional sports. There were brief moments of success, but on
each occasion, front-office infighting would invariably cause the
franchise to slide back down to the basement again.
But in the first four months of 2000, everything changed. The
hiring of head coach Bill Belichick and Vice President of Player
Personnel Scott Pioli and the drafting of quarterback Tom Brady
turned the fortunes of the franchise around. And their
nontraditional approach to acquiring personnel---remembering that
it's not about collecting talent, it's about assembling a
team---quickly led to three Super Bowl titles in four seasons. It's
a feat that, in the salary cap era, with free agency, planned
parity and balanced scheduling, is in many ways even more
impressive than anything achieved by the past dynasties of Green
Bay, Pittsburgh, Dallas, and San Francisco.
Along the way, Christopher Price has had a front-row seat for
football history, chronicling the rise to power of the NFL's
unlikeliest superpower. Price takes the reader inside the franchise
to give him a dynamic portrait of a mighty organization at the
height of its power. Readers are immersed in the locker room during
the strange and tumultuous days of 2001 and 2003, when major
personnel moves involving a pair of the most popular players in
franchise history---Drew Bledsoe and Lawyer Milloy---threatened to
rock their championship foundation to the core. Readers get an
up-close look at the team that dominated the league on the way to a
record-setting winning streak in 2004. And Price analyzes what went
wrong when they fell short in 2005 and 2006, and how they plan to
return to Super Bowl form in 2007.
"The Blueprint" will explore how the Patriots went from the dregs
to a dynasty, becoming the gold standard for professional sports
franchises everywhere. It will prompt sports fans (and those who
study organizations) to acknowledge what many football insiders
have believed for a long time: when it comes to building a
successful system, the Patriots have the Blueprint.
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