It’s a sad day in Patriots Nation, losing their all-time leading receiver to Peyton Manning and the Broncos after six years together. Most of my big picture thoughts can be found here, and I also put together a big picture retrospective here, but now with the details of the deal in focus it clears some things up.
This was not about money for New England. Welker got a 2-year, $12 million deal, and New England was offering 2-years, $10 million. They could’ve easily afforded more, but their refusal to shows what they thought of Welker in their offense moving forward.
This was more about the Patriots wanting to take their offense in a new direction. We’ve seen the Welker-based offense for six seasons and four playoff runs, and it’s been the same thing… unstoppable in the regular season, sputtering in the playoffs, every year. The good physical teams could effectively slow down the offense, despite Welker still having the same stats he was getting in the regular season.
I believe the Patriots no longer saw the offense on an upward trajectory with Welker. They’ve been there, done that, and were ready to reduce him to a back-up role and pay him as such.
Welker was a great crutch for Brady. He was always healthy and always open underneath, and the result was an offense that could rack up 12-14 play drives eating defenses up 6-8 yards at a time. But against the best defenses that kind of continued execution becomes extremely difficult, and as we saw against the Ravens, Giants and Jets, once they began to slow the Pats down it just continued to snowball, leaving the vaunted Pats offense looking completely ineffective like they did in the second half of the AFC Championship.
You will never see an ill word spoken about Welker here. It was an awesome offense and his connection with Brady was special. But the part of me that loves football is excited to see how the Patriots evolve now on offense. They still have plenty of cap space and free agency options, and let’s not forget it’s not like their offensive weaponry cabinet is exactly empty.
The third and final act of Brady’s career will not be connected to the high-flying 2007 offense or the surgical blitzkreig of 2010-2012. It will be something new, and something designed to avoid the pitfalls that kept the Pats from closing the deal from 2007-2012.
It’s sad to see as great a Patriot as Wes go, but it will be exciting to see what’s next.