When I attended the unveiling of NFL Films’ New England Patriots Super Bowl Championship DVD/Video at a media screening in Boston back in March, I overheard Boston Globe NFL beat writer Nick Cafardo mention that he was writing a book about the team’s improbable season. He even knew then what the title would be: The Impossible Team. Less than six months later (yet including events from March and April), the book is out, just in time for Patriots fans to re-live the improbable events of the 2001-’02 season before the upcoming opener on September 9.

Pats fans will be thrilled to know that their team’s season has been documented so thoroughly in this 228-page work, and Cafardo, who has covered the team since the start of the 1996 season, was just the guy for the job. Cafardo has done a great job writing for the Globe during his tenure covering the team; before that he was the paper’s Red Sox beat writer, a position now held by baseball scribe Gordon Edes. Having attended every practice and every Pats game as a member of the traveling media during the 2001-’02 season, Cafardo has a unique perspective on the team’s fortunes. With the publication of this book fans can revisit some of season’s plots, only this time the inside stories are fleshed out and, in some cases, explained.

The Impossible Team: The Worst to First Patriots’ Super Bowl Season (Triumph Books) will definitely serve as a keepsake for fans of the team everywhere, and is even a thrilling story for those who did not follow the team during its wild ride to the Super Bowl championship. While Cafardo covers little of the team’s history leading up to this season, the book does give a concise round-up of every game leading up to the finale in New Orleans. It also includes a lot of commentary from players and coaches, along with analysis of some of the most intriguing aspects of the season, including the Terry Glenn fiasco, the Bledsoe-Brady quarterback controversy, the Snow Game, and the anger that the players harbored as they found themselves lightly regarded and underestimated during their playoff run.

After a forward by wide receiver/punt returner extraordinaire Troy Brown, the story jumps right into the most exciting moment: Super Bowl XXXVI at the Superdome. While the rest of the book plays out chronologically, Cafardo chose to begin the tale at the pinnacle of the team’s achievement, and by the end of the first chapter, the reader is breathless and reinvigorated. Once Adam Vinatieri’s game-winning kick is through the uprights and the confetti pours down from the rafters, the tale reverts back to a " how-it-all-began " compilation, starting with the assembly of the team by the coaching staff and personnel director Scott Pioli, through training camp, and then into the games themselves. Separate chapters along the way detail the death of QB coach Dick Rehbein during training camp, the September 11 attacks and their effect on the team and the league, Bledsoe’s injury, and Glenn’s season-long soap opera. But while all this is interesting and comprehensive, the book ends with the AFC title game won by the Patriots in Pittsburgh, rather than with the Super Bowl victory. Readers who want to be reminded of how it all ended are therefore forced to revert back and re-read chapter one.

The Impossible Dream is a fine companion to the championship video/DVD that every true Pats fan already has — a sure way for every fan to re-live the greatest season in New England Patriots history.

All that said, I must admit to being a little disappointed in Cafardo’s work. Understandably, he wanted to get the book out in time for Patriots fans’ reignited fall frenzy, but I almost feel that the deadlines imposed on him to meet the fall delivery date compromised his efforts to tell a complete and accurate story. Did Cafardo " rush " it? You’ll have to be the judge of that, but I was oftentimes distracted by fractured sentences, the inconsistent use of commas and other stylistic elements, and, at times, flat-out factual mistakes. I have always enjoyed Cafardo’s work in the Globe, and that is why I was miffed by the book’s sloppiness. Perhaps it will be such a success that some of the errors can be corrected in subsequent editions. But for now it should be pointed out that, while the book is vastly entertaining, The Impossible Team needs to get some of its facts straight. For instance:

• When talking about coach Rehbein, Cafardo says that " He had coached in the league for 23 years with the Green Bay Packers, the Los Angeles Express, the Minnesota Vikings, and the New York Giants. " Well, if we’re talking about the league called the NFL, the LA Express cannot possibly be included, since they were a USFL team (page 28).

• Cafardo’s dates regarding linebacker Andy Katzenmoyer are off by a year, as the injury-prone Ohio State product was drafted in 1999, not 1998, and the subsequent dates regarding his brief stay with the team are off as well (page 31).

• Cafardo mentions in passing (on page 38) that Glenn was " still AWOL " from camp, but does not explain the reasons for the troubled receiver’s unexcused absence until page 104.

• Strange sentences: " [Michael] Bishop had fallen to fourth on the QB depth chart, and though the Patriots had kept four QBs in 2000, Bishop has become more of a distraction than anything " (tense mix-up, page 39); " Roman Phifer led the defense, without question one of the most significant free-agent signings " (page 42); " [Eddie Andelman] had a personal campaign called ‘Jambalaya,’ referring to the popular New Orleans cuisine, in which the Patriots played and lost to the Green Bay Packers in Super Bowl XXXI " (page 47); " [Jermaine] Wiggins had showed promise... " (page 50); " ... you wouldn’t have got many responses in [coach] Belichick’s favor (page 76); " But that [throwing success] plummeted like the New England weather ... (page 119); referring to the 1982 snowplow game, he writes, " [The plowing maneuver was responsible for] sending Hall of Fame coach Don Shula into a snit of snits that to this day he has not got over " (pg. 179).

• On the first page of an eight-page photo spread, the Patriots’ new home is referred to as CMGI Stadium, whereas the edifice’s original name was CMGI Field.

• On page 85, Cafardo intimates that Doug Flutie’s famous Hail Mary pass against the University of Miami happened at Foxboro Stadium, when in fact " The Miracle in Miami " happened there, at the Orange Bowl.

• Most everyone knows that the Bruins’ and Celtics’ home is the FleetCenter, not the Fleet Center (page 111).

• In talking about Denver quarterback Brian Griese on page 116, it’s mentioned that " His father was Hall of Famer Brian Griese of Miami Dolphins fame. " It’s Bob, not Brian.

• Perhaps most egregious, Cafardo, who admits a genuine admiration for Drew Bledsoe, twice has Drew a product of the University of Washington, when indeed Bledsoe attended Washington State University (pages 140 and 147).

• The final regular-season home game against Miami is mentioned as being played " on a cold night where the game-time wind chill was 16 degrees ... " The weather conditions might have been accurate, but the game itself was scheduled for a 12:30 p.m. kickoff, and was played under bright sunshine (page 170).

• " On the plane ride home [from Charlotte, North Carolina, after the final regular-season game] that night, the Patriots needed the Jets to lose so they would get the bye.... When the pilot announced the final score — 14-9 Bills — there was a little turbulence in the air " (page 175). In fact, the Jets’ loss to Buffalo was a week earlier, and New England needed the Jets to win in Oakland in their finale to give the Pats the bye week. The Jets obliged, winning 24-22, and the Raiders were stuck playing in the wild-card round.

• Referring to the aftermath of the Snow Game against the Raiders, Cafardo writes, " The team of destiny, which had been the seven-and-a-half-point underdog in its own backyard, was moving on to the AFC Championship game. . . " (pages 186–187). The Patriots had been listed as three-point home favorites in most odds-makers’ eyes prior to that game.

• There are numerous misspellings. The author refers to the team’s receiving " core, " rather than " corps " on page 38; quoting Bryan Cox, Cafardo notes that the linebacker said, " No, I’m not [bleeping] alright! " (page 121 — " alright " is not a word, the Who notwithstanding); refers to Globe colleague Dan Shaughnessy as " Shaughnessey " on page 158; and lists the Carolina Panthers’ home field as " Ericcson " Stadium, rather than Ericsson, on page 173.

Look, I don’t want to be a negative person. I went into this process eager to enjoy the book, much as one would enter a theater to see a highly recommended movie. I knew how this wonderful story was going to turn out, and I appreciated the opportunity to get a little deeper into the locker room and find out more of the behind-the-scenes developments of the Patriots’ star-struck season. I presume to understand the time restraints Cafardo was under as he began this project, and I’m grateful to him for putting down on paper the tale of this remarkable team and season. Nonetheless, I was disappointed — not only by the aforementioned errors and oftentimes sloppy editing, but by the absence of deeper portraits of some of the key characters’ personalities. Most of the quotes seem to be drawn from locker-room interviews and coaching-staff press conferences. I would have preferred more one-on-one stuff and a bit more depth on some of the player and coach profiles.

Perhaps I’m so critical because I was familiar with the week-by-week stories. I had read Cafardo’s newspaper work throughout the season and was already vaguely familiar with most of the author’s words and anecdotes before they appeared in the pages of this book.

Yet this was no Season on the Brink, where author John Feinstein went into that season knowing that he was eventually going to pen a book about that Bobby Knight–led Indiana Hoosiers team. Cafardo was a newspaper reporter covering a team, and at the beginning of the 2001 training camp there was no way he could have known he was covering a Super Bowl champion. In fact, I have doubts that this book would have even been published had it not been for the team’s storybook season ending. Once the Patriots reached the playoffs, Cafardo probably wished that he had approached aspects of the unfolding season a little differently, but by then it was probably too late, and the team of Cinderellas had already been discovered by the national media.

Nonetheless, he has done a nice job of providing Patriots fans with the definitive history of that championship season, and if he missed some details in his haste to get it out in time for the September 9 kickoff at Gillette Stadium, well, that’s nothing to get overly peeved about. Enjoy it with gusto and a Schaefer.

After all, I didn’t know that much about each of the seven dwarfs’ personalities after I finished Snow White, but that hardly detracted from the happy ending.

Sporting Eye appears every Monday and Friday on bostonphoenix.com. Christopher Young can be reached at cyoung[a]phx.com