From the end of Curran's review:
But the timing of Leibovich’s reporting was ideal when it comes to portraying Brady as a luxury yacht on the NFL’s storm-tossed seas. During Deflategate, he’s just collateral damage in Goodell’s effort to satisfy owners who want a pound of Patriots flesh. For Kraft, he’s a cash cow, a bauble and a pseudo-offspring. For Belichick, he’s a widget that may need replacing.
The book concludes with Brady in April answering some final questions from Leibovich before the book went to print. Brady e-mailed an audio file to Leibovich with his answers.
His answer to whether he’d be the Patriots quarterback in 2018? Here’s how Leibovich related it.
“It’s April and I don’t intend to retire,” he said. “And I certainly don’t intend to get traded.” He added that “they can do whatever they want.” It was pretty clear that things were not great between “they” and Brady right then; my sense is -- informed by talking to some people close to him -- that it wouldn’t kill Brady if the Patriots were to release him into free agency, allowing him to control his next move. But that wasn’t going to happen, so here we were and the game continued.
That was the final page I had folded over. There were 30 others that I chose not to quote from here and at least 30 others I didn’t fold over where my eyebrows were also up.
It probably took a reporter like Leibovich to write a historic book like this.
A top-flight journalist who’d gorged on a product for decades parachutes into the factory to see exactly how the product is made and who’s making it. The findings are mind-numbing, stomach-turning and stupefying. But the product is still so delicious.
