What to Read Next: It's Better to Be Feared by Seth Wickersham
Volume 9, Issue #2
I cannot remember the last time I watched an NFL football game from start to finish; in fact, I can hardly recall when I last sat down and watched even 30 straight minutes of one. As a parent, Sunday afternoons are just not the time to dedicate 3-4 hours to football.
But as a kid and through my mid-20s, I was an obsessive Minnesota Vikings fan with a splash of Broncos thrown in when we moved to Denver. (It proved much easier to be a Broncos fan; Peyton Manning won a championship for ‘em early in our time there.) Like every proper Vikes fan, I remember crying in 1998 when Gary Anderson missed wide left, costing our purple and gold their rightful spot in the Super Bowl. What followed — and what Vikings fans have known from Day One — was decades of playoff heartbreak. We always had a competent team, but never quite good enough to actually win it all.
The book I’m recommending today is about a team that’s pretty much the opposite of that: the New England Patriots. I hated the Patriots during their two-decade run of six Super Bowls (I still do — nobody deserves that much winning), but I loved Seth Wickersham’s It’s Better to Be Feared.
It’s Better to Be Feared: The New England Patriots Dynasty and the Pursuit of Greatness by Seth Wickersham
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become more and more impressed with athletes who can maintain greatness into their late 30s and even early 40s. Lebron James, Serena Williams, and of course, Tom Brady. I can’t stand the guy, but being at the top of your game for so long is just damn remarkable to witness.
As Wickersham notes in his 2021 debut, though, that kind of sustained greatness requires an obscene level of obsession and sacrifice — not to mention a hefty portion of natural talent. Wickersham spends 450 wildly compelling pages profiling Brady and the other two leaders of the Patriots organization in those years: head coach Bill Belichick and owner Robert Kraft.
Each of those three men brought a unique mix of personality and energy to the team, ultimately coalescing into an unmatched group that every team in the league feared, despised, and begrudgingly respected.
Most great sports books peak at the point of its main character winning a title at the apex of their career — but when that team/person wins six championships, how do you structure the narrative in a way that remains exciting?
This is where Wickersham excelled and where the book rose above its peers in the genre. He created a story arc that moved from the electric and surprising first three titles, to a nearly decade-long drought, to the final three titles that were much harder to come by (and ultimately led to the end of that tripartite relationship). In between the titles were personal ups and downs, cheating scandals, league changes, and up-and-coming players like Patrick Mahomes who wanted to rip the torch from the Pats’ hands.
It’s Better to Be Feared is longer than most sports books, but I was never bored and never felt the narrative slowing down. No matter your fandom, these pages offer plenty to love and hate about the Pats dynasty; and for those who aren’t sports fans, there’s as much relational drama as any reality show. Tucked into all that are a bevy of lessons about leadership and greatness, particularly when that greatness comes early and sustains for years on end. I highly recommend this book.
Be good to each other, and as always, I’d love to hear what you’re reading and enjoying.
-Jeremy
Thank you so much! You got exactly what I was going for.
A good review that I admit I read it because the review title sucked me in: “I don’t know who Seth Wickersham is, but I should find out why it’s so important that he fears me.”