Robyn Glaser quite literally picked up the pieces for the reeling Patriots after Spygate.
The most jarring scene in the next two episodes of the AppleTV+ documentary “The Dynasty” is a re-enactment of Glaser — who was hired by Patriots owner Robert Kraft to be a liaison to the league — walking down a hallway of the team facility with a hammer in her hand.
It is a callback to a day in 2007, when she met NFL security personnel to smash the illegal videotapes made by a Patriots employee with a camera focused on the Jets’ sideline to film coaches’ hand signals during the season-opening game in East Rutherford.
“I remember walking down the hallway and asking someone for a hammer,” Glaser said. “And they took the hammer to the tapes. And I’m on my hands and knees, in a dress and high heels, picking up the tapes and throwing them away. I remember thinking to myself, ‘All the news cycles, all the commentary, this is done. It’s over. We’ve been fined. This is over.’ That is not at all what happened.”
Instead, nearly 17 years later, Spygate remains the biggest stain on the Patriots’ 20-year dynasty that produced six Super Bowls and G.O.A.T. résumés for quarterback Tom Brady and head coach Bill Belichick.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell’s decision to hastily destroy the tapes still rings suspicious with critics who believe there are unanswered questions about the Patriots’ level of wrongdoing.
The Post was provided advance screening access to review all 10 episodes of “The Dynasty.”
The first two episodes are available on the streaming service, and the next two will be released Friday.
The documentary is produced by Imagine Documentaries but the copyright holder is “Kraft Dynasty LLC 2024,” which offers some insight into why some people felt empowered to talk in this project given that it comes from the team ownership point of view.
As is a theme across the series, the episode (No. 4) is dedicated to the 2007 season — from the acquisition of game-breaker Randy Moss, to Spygate accusations, to an undefeated regular season, and ending with the stunning loss to the Giants in Super Bowl XLII — stands out from similar works reliving the era because of the unfamiliar voices that lend credibility to the in-depth reporting.
Mixed in with familiar characters Kraft, Belichick, Brady and Goodell are the likes of Glaser, Patrick Aramini and Ernie Adams.
Kraft candidly admits that he pleaded with NFL lawyers not to suspend Belichick to “protect his reputation,” agreeing to eventual penalties of a $500,000 fine for the head coach and a $250,000 fine and loss of a first-round draft pick for the organization.
As a top stadium security official for 35 years and the so-called “Mayor of the Meadowlands,” Aramini ultimately intervened on Sept. 9, 2007 when Jets security seized the camera in question from the Patriots.
“Nobody had any f—ing idea what to do,” Aramini said. “The Patriots were saying, ‘That’s my f—ing property.’ The Jets were saying, ‘You’re f—ing spying on us. We don’t want you to have it.’ I told them, ‘Possession is nine-tenths of the law. I’m in possession of it.’”
But it is Aramini’s background as a former undercover narcotics officer for the New Jersey State Police who admits to a guilty conscience over betraying the families that he infiltrated which serves as the perfect storytelling technique, unspokenly analogous to Jets head coach Eric Mangini exposing the secrets that he learned working under Belichick with the Patriots.
The mysterious Adams — the Patriots’ seldom-heard-from director of football research and Belichick’s right-hand man — also sits for the camera, though he says “it’s going to the grave a little bit with me.”
Spygate is portrayed as the catalyst for what came next: A record-setting offense ringing up blowout victories as if to say, “Who needs videos?” Tedy Bruschi, Moss, Rodney Harrison and Donte Stallworth reveled in the birth of a new villainous image for the Patriots, no longer seen as the model organization that won three Super Bowls in four years.
Behind-the-scenes footage of Belichick’s locker-room speech calling on players to ignore “this Jets thing,” and players adopting Queen’s “Another one bites the dust” as a victory celebration song are a truer response to Spygate than the cliched soundbites given to reporters at the time.
The 2007 Patriots are portrayed as a team of destiny … until meeting Giants, the New York media who snapped photos of Brady’s foot in a boot outside then-girlfriend Gisele Bundchen’s apartment — “Who’s afraid of Tommy now” screamed the front page of The Post on Jan. 22, 2008 — and the magic of David Tyree’s helmet.
“Having won three Super Bowls and now going to another, we’d been blessed and almost a little spoiled,” Kraft said. “I thought it was God’s hand at work, but this time it was just the reserve. It was the devil at work.”
And, just like that, the tone of the dynasty and “The Dynasty” has shifted.
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