Pats from the Past, Episode 18: Ken Rodgers

Time now for another episode of Pats from the Past podcast. Matt Smith alongside Brian Worrie and we are more than pleased today can be joined by one of the true greats from NFL Films, their vice president and senior coordinating producer, Ken Rogers, who you may know as from behind the scenes, is an integral part of Films' historical component and is

It's a true honor. I thank you for having me.

I wanted to win the Super Bowl as a wild card team so we could do four Games to Glory.

Yeah, yeah, Well, can I tell you something I've always thought of that films would have the material and we would make sure that we would do our best to try to buffer or try to enhance whatever great stuff films would have.

Kenn, I simiz, have.

You copyrighted four games to Glory? Like you have three Games to Glory?

I believe so is the answer. I believe so.

I would imagine the crafts are way ahead.

Of the game.

Yeah, yep, they're quite good at that, as well as many other things. Kenny. I think people would be interested to know, and I think people know who you are, maybe don't know necessarily your story. How did you get started at films?

So? I was working in Los Angeles. I had gone to film school out there, originally from New Jersey, and I had no thought of working in sports, to be honest, not a huge sports fan.

I was a film geek.

I loved filmmaking, and what I did as a kid was just watch movies. I grew up in the era where HBO and those type of pay channels had just come out, and MTV, of course, to me, was like we're like little.

Movies, these videos. So I wanted to be a filmmaker.

I was trying to make it in Los Angeles, and I visited a friend who was working at NFL Films when I came home for Christmas. One Christmas, and this was the Christmas of two thousand, right before the changeover, and I went to NFL Films to meet him and went to the restroom when I was when I arrived, and as I walked out of the restroom, I literally opened the door and it opened into Steve Sable and I almost knocked him over. And I sort of knew

And at the time, I was working as.

An assistant to a lawyer at Hans Zimmer's composing studio Wow, and he had just done Gladiator, and so we started talking about about Gladiator movies, you know, which led us to you know, all kinds of historical recreation movies and Ben hur and you know, we just started talking and after ten minutes he stopped and he said, you should apply here.

You should work here. And you know there's.

A lot of interns and kids will ask me, you know, how can I work at NFL Films? I say, look, all I know is how I ended up working at the NFL Films. I had the perfect amount of full bladder that it timed out perfectly that I opened the door onto Steve Sable And that's how life is.

You just I have no idea how it happened, because.

I ended up applying and he became a great friend and mentor, and it turned out that making football movies fit my personality and who I am better than probably anything I would have found in Los Angeles.

What an unbelievable story. I mean, you talk to people kids, as you said, interns, Hey, how do I get into a job. You opened the bathroom door onto the founder of NFL Films, and the rest for Ken Rogers and his family is history. I mean that really is. You talk about making the most of a ten minute situations, which I was going to ask you, what is your favorite film?

Oh geez.

Gosh, I'm talking about, you know, your LA career. I want to make the next great Oscar winning drama. You know, So what is your favorite?

God?

You know, it changes all the time, obviously because there's so many.

But the film I've been thinking about a lot right.

Now is called The Bad and the Beautiful, which is a great old film about the film industry actually, and I've been thinking about it a lot recently because there's a great line in it where a producer is yelling at a director that they don't know what they're doing in the scene, and the director says to the producer, you know what you have to do to get this scene exactly the way you want it. You have to direct it yourself, because the director just can't stand the

So as a parent, then, and I'm sure you're going to tell me that this is cliched, which is fine, But did you think I did a solid job parenting where I sat down with So I have nineteen year old twins, and I think you know, I sat down with my son last week and we watched The Godfather Part one, which would be my favorite movie. Is that good parenting or poor parenting from your perspective.

Well, it's poor if it's the first time you've done that.

Agree with that. I agree with that.

I don't even know if I could get my kids to sit down and watch it, uh.

Three hours I mean, you got you know, you gotta do that by age eight.

Okay, them down for it and I have failed. That's a fair shout. But so I'm a little late to the game because he was told by his friends at his first semester college that Goodfellows was the best film. We watch Goodfellows. I also love Fellaws but loved it, and I said, now, as great as Goodfellas is, let's watch the real McCoy. Let's watch the real McCoy. So now he wants to see two.

And oh look, that's the thing, like, I can never judge my favorite film. It's it's impossible.

I have a Godfather question though, whatever week it is, right.

Can you Godfather's Godfather is a better film than The Bad and the Beautiful? But right now, if I had to watch one, I love The Bad and Beautiful favorite film right now.

So I want your opinion on this. Then Godfather Part Part three?

Is it?

Is it bad compared to one and two or bad?

I think it's it's too maligned for it's over maligned for what it is. It's bad compared to one and two, but it is not as bad as people I think prefer to remember it because it's fun to bash failures. I mean, that's what American culture does. We raise, we raise speaking of the Patriots, we raise heroes up and then there are parts of society that just love to see them fail. And you can see that across NFL fandom.

You know, in two.

Thousand and one, the country love the Patriots.

And every fans.

Of every fan base across the country couldn't wait. God the Patriots, I hope they win, and the heroes certainly become the people you want to see fail, and that that becomes the case in all of culture. And I think movie franchises are the same way. People they've had enough success, like, oh, yes, the third one sucked and you hate watch it and you.

Yeah, it sucked. That's right, it sucked.

You know, like we love people to succeed, and then we as America, Oh yeah, they love to tear them down.

We're terrible. We're terrible people.

It's funny because after that two thousand and one Super Bowl, I was having a phone conversation that off season with Tom Brady's father and we were talking about his contract situation and whatnot. And because I was working for Patriots Football Weekly at the time, and he uh.

He couldn't believe that.

Like, people were being so critical of Brady in the media, and I said, mister Brady, you gotta understand.

They build you up so they can tear you down.

Little did I know that he would reach a point where it's really tough to tear them down. But back at that point, he was certainly with just won Super Bowl, you know, a mere mortal.

So, Kenny, if you started in two thousand, so you literally were in on the ground floor on this.

So oh I mean, I mean, let me tell you that the happenstance, So the happenstance of running in the Steve Sable then compounds by the fact that I'm brand new and my first season is the two thousand and one season, and I start the season and I'm you know, I'm so green. I've never made football movies. I don't

So I'm like, oh geez.

And that was the start of my, you know, NFL film's career.

And I got to do the highlight film that.

Year of a Super Bowl team, and that caught caught the eye of Steve Sable even more. And I did, I guess a pretty good job, I guess, And you know I got to work my way up. And I owe as much as I owe Steve. I owe Robert Craft and Bill Belichick and Tom Brady and that O one team. You know, like I, I maybe wouldn't have caught the eye of Steve and worked my way up the ladder.

If I wouldn't.

Have caught on with the New England Patriots in two thousand and one. So everything I've achieved is full of happenstance.

Well, I tell you what I mean. There's a long list, including the two people who are sitting here talking with you, who they owe their careers to those three people, and they they they've employed a lot of people and a lot of families have been have had a living made because of those three people. You forgot one, and I'm interested in this one. Have you had a subsequent conversation with Suzanne Morgan about the happenstance and you said, hey, wow, how did they work out here? And did she say

You know what's interesting is we had that talk after two thousand and four and it was like, can you believe you know this turned out? And I'm sure as you as you've experienced too, and anyone who's been on this ride, at the end of two thousand and four,

I almost I don't. I don't want to.

I mean, yeah, like I'm sorry I took the team right, like, I mean, that would have been really fun to be because I've had such great experience and I'm sure you know she's extremely thrilled with her life.

I surely hope so.

But you know, I got to have some incredible experiences that sure she would have been able to have. And I have a little bit of guilt. I mean, sure I got lucky.

I got lucky.

Well, so I started here in nineteen ninety seven, right after the team was in Super Bowl thirty one and then went ten and six, nine and seven, eight and eight, five and eleven. I thought I was uh on the on the downtrain, and then all of a sudden, you know, it turned around.

And it truly has been.

I mean, seventeen straight seasons with ten or more wins just snapped with last week's lost to the Rams. It's been an incredible run. And and so you you obviously have some behind the scenes viewpoints of it that even we don't have working here.

I mean, what would you say? What would you say?

Are some of those those moments where you would you know, you tell your kids about.

Oh, I'm not allowed to tell my kids. I'm not allowed to tell anybody about the things I've seen.

Kid me. That's part of.

That's why where he is, that's right, that's right in this building.

If he didn't, yeah, kidd me. That's part of working for NFL Films.

You know.

I I've spoken even with people at the Patriots who work there, including including you two, who say, oh my gosh, you were you were in that meeting. You know, you shot you filmed that meeting. You know, we've never even seen that meeting. You know, we don't know what happens in that meeting. Or you know, they watch Hard Knocks that I produce on a on a yearly basis and they say, God, we've never seen that on our team. You know, no one's allowed in those sort of situations.

Sony that that forget it.

Yeah, but That's the essence, and I think that that's what Patriot fans would find the most fascinating is at your core and at your company's core, your mission statement or your values that you have, it's a simple one word, it's trust. With trust, it allows you to do some of the things and the projects that keep you going. As somebody who was in Hollywood and wanted to make

Absolutely? And it's not.

I think I've been an okay carrier of that trust.

But the trust goes back to the Sable family.

I mean, it really does go back to Steve, and I give the credit all goes to Steve. And I can tell you that when Coach Belichick was a young coach, when Robert Craft was in the stands, when Tom Brady was a kid, they knew of Steve Sable.

They trusted Steve Sable already as the.

Voice of NFL history, and then once they met them met him, they trusted him even more. You know, Coach Belichick and Steve Sable used to sit together at owners meetings, you know, from the eighties forward and got to know each other. And of course you trust someone who has never broken that trust and had the trust going back of all coaches back to Vince Lombardi. I mean, you know the stories of the people who have trusted Steve

We would never be.

Allowed in anywhere because, as I said, they don't care what you think of them as people. They just they don't want the other coaches to know one single diagram on the on the board on the whiteboard that they that is that is sacricy to coaches, is the actual football.

The other thing that you're dealing with here, Ken is now maybe less so in two thousand when you started, but certainly over the last ten or fifteen years, is we are an instant gratification society. And so whatever it is that you have and you've got nothing but some of the greatest stuff ever, is we've got to get this out there. We've got to put this out there, we've got to deliver this, we've got to put it on a platform. We need to broadcast us whatever it is.

I mean, everyone points to the example now of the Last Dance and how that footage was captured at the time and was used decades later. That's sort of what I planned on doing in two thousand and nine when I followed the team, in particular coach Belichick when he became the first coach in NFL history to wear a wire for every single game during an entire season. And then you know, I was there in Foxborough for most of the season, shooting meetings and behind the scenes, you know,

The history books.

Let's capture how this team works, let's capture how this coach works. And the pitch was, we'll capture it. And I have no idea what we're going to do with it. I don't know what it's for. You know, well, well, where's it going to air? I have no idea, And so I spent an entire season filming a project with no idea what would happen with it? And it was crushing for me, you know, the loss to the Ravens in the playoffs. I literally had so much invested in this team and this project.

I mean I cried on the field.

I remember talking to you when you were driving away that day and how devastated you were because you're sitting there, going, I've got this and now I don't have an ending. I don't know what we're going to do, and just the pain in your voice. I remember you calling me and how upset you were. I mean, imagine Ray Rice went yards on the first place exactly, imagine sitting on

Yeah, and then two years later, we at the NFL decided we're going to launch this new show, a Football Life, and it was thought, you know, you know, what would be a way to launch this show and make it special is to is to make a two part premiere the very first episode of this new series of Football Life, which is now, you know, just a stalwart of NFL network programming about Coach Belichick and that oh nine season.

And it's two.

Seasons later, but who really cares because this isn't about the two thousand and nine season.

This is about Coach Belichick and who he is.

And I mean it turned out to be I think, extremely intriguing for anyone who is remotely interested in football to see how the very best do their job.

Right.

So I'm gonna give you, I'm gonna ask you a question here amongst Patriot Hanks. So that's a it's a little bit of a niche category here. I have an opinion on this fairly. I mean research, there's no data behind it. What's the scene are the two films that people come back to more and more from an instance where they remember it and eleven twelve years down the road they point to and they look at Bill and they go, do you remember that scene from A Football Life?

I'm sure there's different ones for different situations.

I know the.

I mean, I get comments on not being able to fix not being able to set the.

Time on his radio ding ding ding.

That's it.

People go nuts for that because they're like, yeah, he's such a genius, but he can't set the time on his on his car radio. And to me, that was something that I knew when I captured it was going to be in the film because I thought, I mean, it's like you see in the magazines, stars are just like us, right, like, yeah, this is I knew that coach is just a regular guy who's a genius at football.

He's proven a hundred different ways that he's just a regular guy. But I've been around it a lot.

This was just this real quick slice that was so clear to show, Okay, here he's fallible, he's human, and he's okay with it. Like he's not who you think he is. He's more nuanced. There is no black and white in life. Stop trying to make everything black and white. And to me, that's what's fascinating about filmmaking is being able to blow up the black and white and show someone to be as complicated as we all are.

And I love that scene.

Well, my two from the film are as someone who covered the team, right, You very rarely get a glance as to Bill's actual opinion on something, So it would be when one on the sideline with Brady and New Orleans when he says, I can't get this team to play the way it needs to play, so you're shaking your head.

And two did you agree with him, Kenny?

I hear that brought up?

Okay well, And the second one is in just a staff meeting when he says if they take away Moss and Welker, we're screwed, or something to that effect, and you're like, see he does know, of course he knows, he.

Just doesn't toss.

Yeah.

Well, see those two are brought up all the time by critics of the team when things are going bad.

I hear those as proof that.

Things can go wrong in New England, Like, ah, well, remember when he did the same thing in nine when things were going bad.

It's the same thing as nine.

You know that. It's always used as in my mind, as a way to prove that fallibility in a.

Gotcha way, in a in a coaching way, like he's not a genius.

I never thought about it like that. But I mean, Kenny, like, how about that?

How about here?

That is not a that's usually not done in A that's an interesting thing that's usually done in a He's a derogatory. Yeah, he's occurred to me.

Yeah, but how about this? So ken okay, as a kid who was in LA going to film school and wanted to direct the next great feature film, you have your own. He's sleeping with the fishes. It's just a different line. It's I couldn't get him to play that way. And if you take a Welker and loss Away were screwed. I mean the fact that there are people in New England who can recount those scenes and speak about those

It's crazy, Look, it's crazy.

Another another big one from another project you guys just featured again, which is the legendary pink stripes.

You know it is. I have a question for you because I I remember talking to Steve Sable back in probably five and he said to me, I was writing a feature story about the Patriots' success and just for our yearbook actually, and he said to me, Paul Brown brought the classroom to football, Bill Belichick brought the corporate boardroom to football. Is that something that you would agree with and maybe you have experienced from your perspective.

That's that's a great point because the modern NFL.

Head coach.

Requires a leadership style that goes so far beyond and.

Coaching, and I.

Think that's why a lot of really great coaches.

Can not succeed as a head coach. Being a head coach these days is being I mean, it's being a CEO.

It's being it's being the president of a company, of a ship that is is operating on so many different levels outside of the football field, with so many departments interconnected in ways that one person has to manage so that all people are rowing the same direction. That if you are an expert at one thing.

But don't know how to.

Manage people and manage the structure and organization of people, it won't matter how good of a football guy you are. And that's where coachs as a thinker has brought the boardroom, and to his credit, where Robert Craft and the Craft family have given Coach Belichick the the support and structure to put in the place the structures that he needs to run the football operations the way he needs. Because it's completely different than it was even ten years before

This is it is.

I mean, it is long past a pastime where you sort of enjoy playing football on Sunday. It's about winning, and it's about winning is about multiple things past just winning. You're thinking about winning today, You're thinking about winning tomorrow and on Sunday and in the draft and in the future and five years from now. I mean, is everything is happening all at once and that's very corporate like instead of I think maybe in the eighties it was Okay, what are we going to do next week?

And that's as far as you thought, Kenny.

Was there a time when you met Coach Belichick were that, oh my goodness, this is the CEO. Now I see this. Do you remember an incident where that became crystal clear to you?

Yeah?

I remember when we were trying to set up the shoot in Nantucket for what became the football Life. We were trying to figure out when I would go out to Nantucket.

And he knew what day I should come out. It was in July.

That I should come out, and he told me that day and I think March or April.

And I said, well, I.

Mean yeah whenever. He said no, it's going to be that day. I said, you know the day already, and he said, ken.

Every year.

Is structured the same way. If you give me the day and the time of any day in a calendar year, I can tell you what I will be doing because football has that calendar structure, and I have days off that I don't know what I'll be doing where I'm away from football, but I know in general that I'll be doing scouting or I'll be on Nantucket and available to do things. But if you say it's a September Tuesday at three o'clock, I know what I'm doing at

That's unbelievable.

So I have another I have another line for you, and I'm gonna that actually comes from I think it was just a sound effects feature on Coach Belichick, and it's him on the practice field and he's talking to Marque's Hill about jumping off sides on the goal line. So he's standing there and he says to Marquis Hill, you know if they jump off sides, you know what's the penalty. And Marquise looks at him like he doesn't get like, he's like it's a trick question, and he

So fast forward.

I'm in the stands at Super Bowl forty nine and Malcolm Butler makes the interception and falls forward out of the end zone and I see Bill and Tom talking and I said, because of that line from that he said to Marquis Hill, I said, they're going to get up to jump here. That's what they're gonna that's what they're talking about right now. They're going to get the defense to jump and lo and behold they hard count him and and they're off the goal line.

And I remember it because because the films.

Yeah, no, I mean there everyone says about doing your job as being the you know, the catchphrase, but there are so many and situations is something that comes up over and over and over in his training camp wires. I mean that that's training for situations instead of.

What what they want to do. It has redefined, in my mind, the NFL.

I think before the success of the Patriots, I think it's kind of obvious. But before the success of the Patriots, and still today, some teams say, hey, we're gonna be great at what we do and make the other team stop us. And of course the Patriots say, we're gonna be able to do everything and adapt to whatever we have to do to win. And some teams say, well, this is our style of football and we're gonna win or lose play in this way, and and and the Patriots are just.

Adaptable all the time.

And I think, you know, the way, the way the NFL is that is the copycat league. I think it's obviously spread throughout the league, and I think it'll continue to spread because the game has gotten a lot more complicated because people have been trying to keep up with Coach Belichick and the Patriot Way now.

Ken One of the other things that I think Bill sort of changed the game a little bit was the salary cap. When he got here, it was kind of that forty nine Ers Cowboys model, where you even the Ravens. In two thousand, the Jaguars made a run where they, you know, they build it up, build it up, and then all of a sudden, you're gonna be thirty five million dollars over the cap, and so you have to cut it down.

And so you sign all these star players knowing that in three years they're.

All gonna be gone because you're gonna have to cut them because salary cap reasons.

And Bill kind of changed that. I felt like, you know, I remember him using the term middle class.

We have to bring a middle class to the roster and build depth, you know, so you can maintain success through injuries, and that sort of thing. Feel like, you know, kind of the Patriot way also changed the way teams look at the salary.

Cap, I think. I think so.

I think the it almost brought it back to to the way it was. I think maybe with the Giants, you know, the Giants had, you know, a bunch of solid players. I think that he got to work with as a as a coordinator, and those players stayed there. You know, he built he was him coach Parcels were able to build around those players and and win multiple championships.

I think that the.

The not going all in for one championship was definitely a sea change. And then the additional sea change on top of that of of of not just going for one championship but multiple was going not just for one decade or one rip of championships.

But going for.

An infinite amount of time, of being able to do this, of making it a culture rather than that first three years, because I think at first everybody thought, wow, that was really brilliant what he did that first couple of years with the salary cap. To remake that team in two thousand into the team that won three Super Bowls, that he redefined what you do with the salary cap.

But then to do it again for the.

End of the Oughts, for the twenty seventeam and reinvent the team over and over and over again. The eleven team, you know, then to win three more Super Bowls after that, go to another one. It just kept going and I think will continue to keep going in a way that I don't know how if you're any other franchise, you don't say, I don't care what we were doing, We're gonna do it this way. It has totally redefined how

You mentioned other franchises, Ken, and you know, I think I'm speaking for myself here. You have such a deep association with the Patriots. But it's not like I'm the only one who knows that. There's everybody in the league knows that You're at owners meetings in March every single year. You're pitching teams. Hey, we want you guys to do hard knocks, or you're pitching other projects and everything like that.

Well, it's funny. Here's the answer. The perception is that the Patriots will do nothing with NFL films. So the first thing that I'm always told when I pitch an access project Hard Knocks, which I've been doing for twelve years now, or anyone or any other sort of access project, is why don't you ask Belichick to do it? Why don't you Yeah, when Belichick does it, I'll do it. And I say, well, he was the first coach to wear a wire for every single game of an entire season.

If you'd like to do that, we'll do that.

Instead of Hard Knocks. Four weeks in in the middle of August when the games don't count like it. I mean, if you'd like to commit to an entire season where the games really matter, we'll do that. Or you could just let us come in for the preseason for hard knocks, And they sort of realized that, Yeah, coach has done more. Coach Belichick has done more and given more access to the National Football League than any coach has certainly from NFL film standpoint. And he's the best coach that we've

So once I say that, they they lose that argument real quickly.

So there's a breaker, and then they.

They lose all power.

Then then they say, well, well I don't And you go, oh, well, well, now you know coach Belichick will do it. Why why why why won't you do it?

Oh?

Well, well, and now now they're searching for another excuse because it's it's it's usually pretty easy to just say, well, I'm just going to be like coach Belichick. Oh, if you want to be like coach Belichick, and why don't you wear a wire all season?

Perception versus reality?

Right, Oh, there's a huge difference between the two.

Ken what was it if you're allowed just kind of putting a period to the end two thousand and nine in that project, was there a scene? Was there a moment in two thousand and nine that you're allowed to share where you know it was only two hours. I think that was only two hours, you know, please correct me if I'm wrong, But was there a scene in there that you were dying to get in that at the end of the day, you just couldn't find a way to.

Get it in.

You know, while I'm thinking about the perception versus reality is this is a huge one. Is that I feel like, you know, we were able in that film to give a real inside look into the to the true Bill Belichick.

I was in the room. That's not it at all.

And it was presented as here's what happened, and it was actually I'm just spitballing here and making it up. But here's here's maybe what happened. It's just an opinion, but it was presented as fact. And I always wanted to.

To go back and.

Just get all of the all of those radio clips, play them, and then present what actually happened.

Then play them and present what actually happened, and sort of show.

The difference to the fans of like, hey, here's the difference, uh, you know, and maybe here's why coach is the way he is sometimes of you know, I'm not really gonna gonna engage in this back and forth because it doesn't really matter what I say. And there were so many times I felt like saying the coach, hey what what when they asked the question, why don't you just say, well, you're wrong that what I really meant was this and this and this and this. But he I don't think

And you that's what you do in public.

Coach, except for one.

Coach really honestly is beyond other people's opinion. And he's had I saw that year opportunities where I knew that he had an opportunity to answer a question in a press conference that would completely get rid of a talking point that everyone was having that was completely wrong.

If he just said, well, actually, I wasn't doing that. I was doing I wasn't doing X, I was doing why. But he didn't want to.

Give away why, So he just allowed them to continue to be wrong and didn't correct them and didn't care that people were talking about him negatively.

Incorrectly.

Ken do you think he.

Could that would kill me? That would would I would say, you're wrong, I'm right. I'm not a bad guy, guys, I'm not a bad he was. He was like, yeah, I don't, It doesn't doesn't.

But do you think that feeds his fire a little bit inside the building with his players, like because they know what's going on. So when if they turn that radio on and hear stuff that's being said that isn't true, it.

Kind of he can kind of use that as a rallying point within the building.

It's like a I mean, it's it's like a Jedi thing where he's so strong of will that like it made me want to follow him into about Like, look, I don't know how you can be that strong of a person to I mean, if you go to any sort of therapy or therapist or read any self help book, Like the very basics of trying to be healthy is being happy with yourself and not caring what society thinks or other people think. I mean, that's that's sort of where you start, right he is he is a master

He just does.

He cares about people and he wants to help people. He's very, very incredibly nice to me and wants to help me do my films. But I think if I had an opinion that was wrong about him. He wouldn't care to change that. He's okay with who he is. He's perfectly confident that he is who he is, and if someone thinks differently about him, well, that's not going to change what he does. So why spend the energy?

Question, absolutely so. Really, so let me ask you this as somebody he doesn't I agree with everything that you're saying. This year has been a different year for obvious reasons from a success standpoint, and at the end of the day, you mentioned it is a business and the win and losses can't be where he wants it to be. And while in Bill you trust, I still believe is one of the state's mottos, and I believe that there is

I would guess, well, I know losing.

Is not something that's enjoyable at all to him. Like most coaches, I would say, all the great coaches, losing hurts one hundred times more than winning feels good. The pain you feel from losing is always more vivid than the joy.

You feel from winning. It just is for those guys.

And I would think that this year is not motivating because of what people think. Like you said, I mean, asking him about critics is like asking a lamppost.

What he thinks, what it thinks about dogs. It's just not going to register. But if.

If you ask, if it bothers him the win loss record, I'm sure, like forget what other people think. He doesn't like losing, and I'm sure he's as dedicated. He's more dedicated than any fan or any critic or anyone else involved in the entire New England Patriot world on getting it fixed, like no one's no one's more invested in getting it fixed. I can tell you that, you know, like, so, yeah, I'm sure he's very bothered, and but what he does is not worry about I'm only speculating because I don't

Process right.

He's always he's always about well, that's all great. But I can spend the next fifteen minutes lamenting what's what happened last week? Or I can spend the next fifteen minutes making next week better and today right now better, and our team right now better. And that should give always focuses on now and moving forward, and.

That should get every Patriot fan a reason for hope, because he won't sleep or he won't be satisfied until that is corrected. I think one of the other things Kenny is that people you know, Oh, okay, hard knocks, Ken Rogers, oh, all the Patriots projects, two bills, you know, football life, you do other things. You know, you do a lot of other things that have been very critically acclaimed.

Well, it's unannounced, thirty for thirty. I'll actually be directing my fifth thirty for thirty that will be coming out soon, which is an unbelievable thought to me that I'd be able to direct five thirty for thirties.

Certainly the premiere.

You know brand when it comes to sports documentaries, something that that NFL Films is so thrilled to be part of. And it was really it was really great to have the Two Bills be part of. It's still my favorite one, I have to say, and I think.

This one why.

To me, it was.

The realist thing I've ever done, the Two Bills, in that the goal of a filmmaker is to, or at least me as a documentary filmmaker, is to express the reality of a situation. You know, I try to express in football life, what you know what coach Belichick is like on a daily basis, to express.

What the.

Buffalo Bills of the early nineties go through having lost for Super Bowls, et cetera, et cetera. To express the relationship between Bill Parcells and Bill Belichick is one of those things that, as I said, is so nuanced and complicated and it's not black and white that I thought, I.

Don't know how I'm going to do this.

Then when they came and sat down, there was so much odd, true nuanced.

Energy in the room between them.

There was there was discomfort, there was love, there was tension that the way they looked at each other, there was all kinds of I'm not sure if we're gonna fight it during this conversation. I look, I really like you, but I know we're going to be coming up on some tough conversations.

I might cry, I might yell at you.

I don't know what's going on. And it was so complicated and you could feel it in the room. And at the end of the day when we all left, exhausted emotionally, our crew like, oh my god, like did you you could hardly.

Breathe in that room.

You didn't know what was going to happen, and by just showing them on screen looking at each other, using the split screen device to just let them look at each other sometimes and just let the film exist as that interview, just sometimes just living.

In that awkwardness. I think you sensed it a lot.

And there's there's sort of a moment that I that I left in where that for most of the film, they're sort of they're sort of talking as as too, I don't know, not necessarily rivals, but you know, they're co workers. They they have good feelings, and then you know, they they expressed some love and emotion for each other. And then I take them up to the Giant suite and everything's good, and I asked them to go to the Jets locker room and they they rebel against me.

Unbelievable answer. And I will just add this anecdote for whatever it's worth. As I remember, Kenny, you were standing outside of my office while this was going on, and I remember you were you were concerned, you were frustrated, we're talking about this, and there was an uneasy, uneasiness about you, and you know, what is this going to do? And did I get this right into I do this?

When they started joking with me and busting busting on me that they weren't gonna listen to me, and where's where's the elevator?

We're out of here?

I knew, well he I knew the shoot was over, but b I thought they are really happy with what just happened.

They're they're they're gett they're they're almost giddy.

You know.

That's the way Parcels and Coach Belichick are is if they're if they're giving you some grief.

In that way, they like you.

And in that case, I felt like they liked what just happened, that they enjoyed being together, they enjoyed this this process, and I was like, I'm getting this on camera that that that you can just sense that they're they're enjoying walking together out of this room and they're they're ready to call this interview over because they're in a really good spot together and I was it just it was beautiful to me and and I just knew, like, well, that's the end of the film.

I don't need anymore.

This is it.

That's awesome. I'll tell you what. He's had maybe one of the best seats to this dynastic runover the last twenty years that anybody could possibly imagine. And to think that it all happened because of opening a bathroom door and being in the right place at the right time. I apologize on the promotional front, but I will tell Patriot fans who should be Ken Rogers fans, that my

Some time to talk with us today.

All the best of my friend.

Thank you so much for having me always pleasure to talk with both of you. Thank you for downloading this podcast, Subscribe on Apple, google Play, and everywhere else you listen like the show.

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