He has a gift for sniffing out where true power lies, and his doggedness brings him to bathroom meetings among N.F.L. But he stuck around long enough to catch a glimpse into the league’s power structure, and it left him a bit queasy.

Leibovich just wanted to bond with Tom Brady. Leibovich’s nostalgia for a more innocent kind of fandom is upended, and football becomes another battleground in the culture wars. As his book unfolds, though, his onetime ability to compartmentalize football and protect it from the nastiness of real life begins to melt away. At the same time, Leibovich is a fan like the rest of us, given to generic, often specious, and occasionally paranoid defenses of his cherished Patriots. He writes with a brusque charm, training his eye toward features of the league that many longtime observers might take for granted or condition themselves to ignore. Leibovich seems largely immune to the challenges around access and appeasement that many sports journalists face he pursues his leads with the freedom of someone who’s embedding in the N.F.L.

Big game the nfl in dangerous times