A Review of '3 Games to Glory VI.' (SPOILER: The Patriots Win.)

Jerry Thornton5/08/2019 6:43 PM

Like I mentioned when the Patriots dropped the trailer for “3 Games to Glory VI,” it’s rare than any film franchise is so successful that it gets a sixth installment. And when they do, it’ll probably be fried garbage because they’re just going with the material so bad it didn’t make it into either of the five films before. So for every “Diamonds are Forever,” you’re invariably going to get a dozen “Friday the 13th VI: Jason Lives.”

I’m happy to report that this is not the case with the sixth 3G2G (its droid name). Of all the spoils of winning the NFL war, all the video tributes you get from the “Sound FX” special to the official DVD to your own “America’s Game,” this one has always delivered the most. And it’s not even close. 3GTG is made by Kraft Productions. So they’ve got practically unlimited access that even NFL Films, as much as Bill Belichick respects what they do for the game, doesn’t get. What results is just about the closest we’re ever going to get to a “Hard Knocks: Patriots” experience. Which will only happen if someone sticks the Sideline King with Valyerian steel, turning him into crushed ice.

Part VI is formatted the same way as the previous iterations. One disc for each of the postseason games, with all the NFL Films footage and audio by the Patriots radio crew. Plus special features that give us the most behind the scenes stuff we ever get to see. The game highlights are every bit as astonishing as we’ve come to expect from NFL Films over the last half a century or however long they’ve been doing it. I’m still going through the game action, because there’s a lot there and we’ve seen most of it before. Those parts are like the Peter Jackson Director’s Cut of the official Super Bowl DVD and there’s a ton to go through. So I’ll instead just hit the highlights of the Special Features, where 3GTG always earns what you paid for it:

–There’s not that incredible “Holy Pink Stripes” moment like we got from the win over Seattle in “3G2G: IV” where we found out Ernie Adams is a real, corporeal being and not just Belichick’s Tyler Durden, or the practice footage where they coached Malcolm Butler up to do exactly what he did on the goal line. But what we do get for the Xs & Os nerds are meetings from the Super Bowl bye week. With cornerbacks coach Josh Boyer and D-line coach Brendan Daly reporting to Brian Flores about the Rams’ West Coast offense adjusts their wide receiver splits. And on offense, Dante Scarnecchia warning Josh McDaniels about Dante Fowler’s ability to blow up a play and McDaniels asking Scar to keep him posted on who’s in the game on defense at a given time so he can call plays accordingly. I could watch hours of that stuff. But I’ll settle for the original footage, before they digitized out the stuff on the white board behind them.

–I guess the closest we get to an Ernie Adams is a feature on Nancy Meier, who looks like she’s about 50. But if she is, the franchise broke child labor laws because she’s been working for them since 1975. She started out as a secretary working for Chuck frigging Fairbanks and is now nothing less than the Director of Scouting Administration. Who knew? Not me, I can promise you that.

–There are a couple of different segments about the scouting department, college and pro. It’s the kind of thing you don’t see enough of. Scouts going on the road and what that life is like. Joe Judge working out a Rutgers punter and punt returner, admitting he’s trying to rattle the punter and see how he responds and being specific enough to tell the returner which pec he wants him to field the ball with. We get a little inside their draft war room from 2018. And we get a look into their process of evaluating free agents, where Nick Caserio says his priorities are “Smart. Tough. Dependable. Reliable.” Why there isn’t a show like this on NFL Network is beyond me.

–The Mic’d Up features are pretty familiar by now. They get, at different times, Julian Edelman, Devin McCourty, Belichick and James White. Some of the clips are new. And the old ones are worth revisiting for … well, for the rest of your time on Earth. Edelman yelling “Lionel Ritchie, bro! All. Night. Long!” or some incomprehensible gibberish followed by “I don’t even know what I just said.” Or his instant meme-worthy “You’re too old!” But for me it doesn’t get better than Sean McVay going full hearteyes at Belichick in the Super Bowl pregame or The Hooded One coaching up his defense as calmly as if it was the third day of camp.

–So much has gone on since, I actually forgot the extent to which they destroyed the Chargers at Gillette. If it’s not the most complete postseason game they’ve played in the 2000s, it has to be top three.

–What I haven’t forgotten is how great the AFC championship game was. In time the world might recognize it as one of the best postseason games ever played. In one of the features Judge holds a special teams meeting where he goes into specifics about stopping Tyreek Hill’s punt returns, then we get the play where Matthew Slater pins him to the sidelines and three other cover guys chase him backwards inside the Chiefs’ 10. There’s a player on the Chiefs bench praying “for something weird to happen,” jump cut to Edelman’s near muffed punt. Then the interception bouncing off his hands. Then after the INT went through Gronk’s hands, you get sound of just how over the guys on the field thought the game was. Until Dee Ford’s neutral zone infraction. I’ll rewatch that game more than the other two combined.

–You know they’ve done a lot of these when one of the features is about the equipment staff. But I’m not kidding you when I say it’s way more interesting than it sounds. Those guys are like the supply officers in a military campaign in that nobody thinks about them but what they do every day during the season is a miracle of logistics.

–Lastly there is an extended feature like the one Belichick does every week on “Patriots All Access,” breaking down the biggest plays of the Super Bowl. Trust me, you’re gonna need a bigger bottle of lotion.

So it should come as no surprise that I’m giving this two thumbs up.