If you haven’t heard it yet I’m sure it will pop up somewhere so this is a preemptive attempt to provide some perspective on the twitter personality known as “Incarcerated Bob” and this tweet that he made this morning:
**BREAKING NEWS** Patriots are looking into shopping WR Wes Welker this off-season : Pats believe they can get a 2nd RD pick or early 3rd
I can’t say that I definitively know that this is untrue, but I do know that Bob reports a lot of stuff that never happens. His tweets surrounding Jim Harbaugh were pretty comical, he had Harbaugh as a lock to multiple places multiple times.
It’s also worth mentioning that Bob is a Jets fan, so we can’t rule out him just trying to drive a stake between the Pats and Welker after his first series benching.
Finally, and most logically, the season ended three days ago. Are we to assume that the Patriots, namely BB, already sat down, decided that they’d be better off getting either a 3rd second or third round pick than they’d be with WW coming into year two after an ACL injury (usually the year they get back to 100%)? Not only did they decide all this but they told people who then somehow leaked word back to Incarcerated Bob? Highly doubtful.
Perhaps Bob or his sources (likely Jets related) saw a small rift between BB and WW and wanted to try to up the stakes. The fact is that players have had rifts with BB before, but once it’s over with it’s in the past. So I find it unlikely that there would be residual tension based on Welker getting benched for one series.
Welker is signed through 2011, so there could be some contract discussions with him about an extension this offseason. But right now his cap number is manageable so there’s no reason to think it would be a salary related move.
So all in all, if/when news of this “report” catches on take it with a grain of salt and consider the source.