Pats Posits: The Offseason Low Point Lives Up To Hype

The end of June is the time when all those who play and follow the NFL take their vacations and any real meaningful news grinds down to a halt. Of course this is the perfect time for terrible social media debates to pop up and old friend Chris Simms was ready to strike with his latest rankings.

This time of year my superpower of not getting into pointless social media debates about who’s better is put to the test. Even if I managed to not give Chris Simms any attention other than updating that Hot Taeks History post, I was further tested by the Welker-Edelman debate.

Yes, it’s that time of year, when there’s just nothing really left to talk about so personal arbitrary rankings rule the day. At least there’s less than a month left until what I actually love most (football) starts, so let’s just try to get by until then.

Here are some Posits on those arguments and more as we start to gear up for a bunch of season preview posts starting next week.

— I think I’ve got Simms down now and his arguments are largely based on Captain Comeback Scott Kacsmar’s. The core it starts with extracting the quarterback from everything else in the game, at least in theory since Simms will use Brady’s coaching when it suits him. To be honest I don’t even really disagree with the premise. Even with Kacsmar, I kind of agree that in a bubble Peyton Manning is probably a better quarterback that Tom Brady.

But my problem with this is that it removes what I love most about football, that it’s the ultimate team game. So we’re starting in fantasyland, evaluating a quarterback in a bubble and stripping away the most interesting narrative.

More importantly, the fact that Brady is not a quarterback produced in a test tube is what makes his so much more special to me. Aaron Rodgers and Patrick Mahomes are unquestionably more athletically talented. But Brady has won for two decades with a revolving cast and has worked his way from the 199th pick to winning six Super Bowls and setting an unprecedented standard of consistency.

Peyton was bred to be a quarterback. Dad and brothers who played, first overall pick and he largely delivered, winning two Super Bowls. But the narrative of the perfectly engineered quarterback robot living mostly up to expectations just doesn’t hold a candle to Brady’s story and that’s where I check out on the debate.

I don’t care to extract Brady from Belichick and McDaniels. That’s football and his success is unavoidably tied to his coaches and teammates, but that’s now a one-way street. Brady has certainly helped those coaches be better as well. Brady helped create this offense and together they’ve continued to evolve with a game that looks vastly different than when they all started.

Everyone is entitled to rank things however they want and I don’t lose sleep over some random dude named something like @FantasyGod88 on Twitter with 100 followers passionately saying that Tom Brady is system quarterback who would be nothing without a head coach who could never win a Super Bowl without him, or something like that.

You can rank Tom Brady wherever you want, but there’s no quarterback in NFL history with a better story and more clutch moments. Give me the lesser-skilled underdog who rose to greatness over the uber-talented who met expectations every time.

I truly hate how little respect Wes Welker gets from large chunks of Patriots fans, based largely on one missed connection in Super Bowl 46. Even more shocking to me is how aggressive fans can be about picking Julian Edelman as the better player.

Again, crazy arguments about who is better just isn’t my thing. We should be able to appreciate both and realize things could’ve been a lot different if Welker got the defensive plays that Edelman got in the Super Bowls.

Tom E. Curran has laid out the argument very well. In comparable years, Welker was more productive, but in the playoffs Edelman came through with a bunch of signature catches.

Signature catches that lead to Super Bowl wins trump everything else, so it’s little surprise how much passion fans have for Edelman. But why does it have to come at the expense of a player who was truly unstoppable and was a defining piece of the offense from 2007-2012?

Do we have less appreciation for John Hannah or Andre Tippett because they never won a Super Bowl? That they got blown off the field the one time they did make it? The standards are sure different nowadays.

Obviously, Edelman’s place on the Mount Rushmore of Brady receivers is cemented at the top, even if his regular season production lagged behind Welker, but Welker deserves better than to still be castigated for one tough catch he didn’t make.

Similar to Brady, Welker was more self-made than Edelman who had four seasons to incubate in New England before getting his chance to break through. Welker kicked around to San Diego and Miami, before Belichick targeted him and made him into a player who took the slot receiver position to new heights.

I’ll never forget seeing that first Welker touchdown against the Jets in Week 1 of the 2007 season. It was clear out of the gate that Brady-Welker would be special and for five seasons they terrorized defenses despite both tearing their ACLs along the way and falling a possession short in two Super Bowls.

Hopefully someday Welker will be welcomed back to The Hall at Patriots Place and can get the recognition he deserves from Patriots Nation. He was a defining part of the dynasty even if he never got a ring.