Nice post - one item that you didn't mentioned ... I don't think the Pats were willing to go beyond 2 years with Welker and with the younger player could go to 5 yrs. It is hard to manipulated cap on a 2 yr deal, much easier on a 5 yr deal. So Amendola's cap hit this year might be about 3M vs. WW at 6M.

Now that the dust is settling after the Welker mayhem, I wanted to offer my opinion before I head off to bed.

Regardless of emotional attachment to Welker, the Patriots ultimately thought that Amendola is the more valuable player at this point. This is evidenced by the Patriots lukewarm offer to Welker and failure to match Denver's offer. Furthermore, they gave money comparable to what Welker received to Amendola. This means that New England preferred Amendola over Welker. Whether you agree or not, this is a fact.

You can argue all day about Welker's toughness, heart, and what he means to the franchise. How much value these attributes possess is an entirely subjective matter...

With that said, what isn't a subjective matter is the follow:

• Amendola is 5 years younger than Welker.
• Welker is bigger and taller.
• Amedola has longer arms which allows him to present more of a threat down the field and catch the ball away from his body easier.
• Amendola is more of a playmaker at PR and KR.
• Amendola is much faster in a straight line.
• Due to many of the aforementioned attributes, Amendola is capable of presenting a bit of a deep threat and move outside hashes at times.

It is also very true that Welker wasn't happy with New England and was carrying a personal grudge. Fair or not, this would have made any relationship going forward strained. Further to this point, Welker clearly wanted to leave. He turned down a very impressive contract offer last offseason and instead took a marginal deal from the Broncos. He wanted out and the Patriots didn't appear too concerned about that.

Now as for durability issues and chemistry with Brady, these are somewhat legit concerns, especially the latter. As for durability, it's not like Amendola is pulling hammies and tweaking ankles... this doesn't appear to be an injury prone player. He suffered a broken elbow and a broken collarbone. These are freak injuries that happen. I firmly believe that moving away from that unforgiving artificial field in St. Louis will help him immensely and these type of hard-impact injuries won't occur.

In terms of chemistry, that's something that will be tough to answer until we see Brady throwing to him. With that said, Brady is a hard-worker and Amendola is a motivated young man. If they both put in the work, and I can't imagine why they wouldn't, I don't expect them having too many issues getting on the same page.

Ultimately I'm pleased with the signing and think it gives them the opportunity to improve in the immediate future, and definitely improves their longterm outlook. Welker was getting older and ultimately the Patriots thought Amedola the more valuable player at this point. Whether you agree or not, this is a fact and this gives me confidence in Amendola.

Barring anymore freak injuries, Amendola is very likely to upgrade the WR position as well at the PR/KR spot for us both in the near and longterm future. He is a hard worker, and he possesses plenty of that heart & soul that Welker has. He will run through a brick wall to win a game and gives 101% on every play.

Obviously there's some emotional sting to losing Welker to the Broncos and Manning, but looking at this in a strictly objective way, I struggle to see how this isn't an upgrade for the Patriots.

If we continue to upgrade our defense and add another piece at WR, this team will be improved and in an adequate position to contend with the Broncos for the AFC Title.

In response to dreighver's comment:

Now that the dust is settling after the Welker mayhem, I wanted to offer my opinion before I head off to bed.

Regardless of emotional attachment to Welker, the Patriots ultimately thought that Amendola is the more valuable player at this point. This is evidenced by the Patriots lukewarm offer to Welker and failure to match Denver's offer. Furthermore, they gave money comparable to what Welker received to Amendola. This means that New England preferred Amendola over Welker. Whether you agree or not, this is a fact.

You can argue all day about Welker's toughness, heart, and what he means to the franchise. How much value these attributes possess is an entirely subjective matter...

With that said, what isn't a subjective matter is the follow:

• Amendola is 5 years younger than Welker.
• Welker is bigger and taller.
• Amedola has longer arms which allows him to present more of a threat down the field and catch the ball away from his body easier.
• Amendola is more of a playmaker at PR and KR.
• Amendola is much faster in a straight line.
• Due to many of the aforementioned attributes, Amendola is capable of presenting a bit of a deep threat and move outside hashes at times.

It is also very true that Welker wasn't happy with New England and was carrying a personal grudge. Fair or not, this would have made any relationship going forward strained. Further to this point, Welker clearly wanted to leave. He turned down a very impressive contract offer last offseason and instead took a marginal deal from the Broncos. He wanted out and the Patriots didn't appear too concerned about that.

Now as for durability issues and chemistry with Brady, these are somewhat legit concerns, especially the latter. As for durability, it's not like Amendola is pulling hammies and tweaking ankles... this doesn't appear to be an injury prone player. He suffered a broken elbow and a broken collarbone. These are freak injuries that happen. I firmly believe that moving away from that unforgiving artificial field in St. Louis will help him immensely and these type of hard-impact injuries won't occur.

In terms of chemistry, that's something that will be tough to answer until we see Brady throwing to him. With that said, Brady is a hard-worker and Amendola is a motivated young man. If they both put in the work, and I can't imagine why they wouldn't, I don't expect them having too many issues getting on the same page.

Ultimately I'm pleased with the signing and think it gives them the opportunity to improve in the immediate future, and definitely improves their longterm outlook. Welker was getting older and ultimately the Patriots thought Amedola the more valuable player at this point. Whether you agree or not, this is a fact and this gives me confidence in Amendola.

Barring anymore freak injuries, Amendola is very likely to upgrade the WR position as well at the PR/KR spot for us both in the near and longterm future. He is a hard worker, and he possesses plenty of that heart & soul that Welker has. He will run through a brick wall to win a game and gives 101% on every play.

Obviously there's some emotional sting to losing Welker to the Broncos and Manning, but looking at this in a strictly objective way, I struggle to see how this isn't an upgrade for the Patriots.

If we continue to upgrade our defense and add another piece at WR, this team will be improved and in an adequate position to contend with the Broncos for the AFC Title.

Amendola is 2 inches taller than Welker and same weight...

From the latest news it appears Welker & his agent were playing ping pong with the Bronco's & Patriots, trying to get more money, & were at least a step behind. NE offered a 5/10 deal with incentives that could have made it 8/16. When it appeared Welker was signing with Denver, NE pounced on Amendola. Unfortunately, Welker's agent got back to NE too late with a counter offer. It was all about timeing. Welker & his agent misplayed it.

From the latest news it appears Welker & his agent were playing ping pong with the Bronco's & Patriots, trying to get more money, & were at least a step behind. NE offered a 5/10 deal with incentives that could have made it 8/16. When it appeared Welker was signing with Denver, NE pounced on Amendola. Unfortunately, Welker's agent got back to NE too late with a counter offer. It was all about timeing. Welker & his agent misplayed it.

In response to xxxcrwn's comment:

From the latest news it appears Welker & his agent were playing ping pong with the Bronco's & Patriots, trying to get more money, & were at least a step behind. NE offered a 5/10 deal with incentives that could have made it 8/16. When it appeared Welker was signing with Denver, NE pounced on Amendola. Unfortunately, Welker's agent got back to NE too late with a counter offer. It was all about timeing. Welker & his agent misplayed it.

Good stuff, do you have a source for this story where you got this info from? Right now, the one thing Welkers agent did do right was win the PR battle I would be interested to know who the source was for your info.

Good write up!

The discouraging part of this is they went out and addressed a position that didn't need to be fixed, instead of focusing on positions that need serious fixing...  WR, DB, DL, OL. 

Welker just had another one of his amazing seasons.  So why take the risk on an injury prone player?  yes, injury prone!  Span of two years, played 12 games out of 32, different injuries.  I think that would be considered injury prone. And the whole artificial turf argument could carry some weight, but the bad news is they will be playing away on artificial turf.

To top it off Welker goes to a AFC rival who has a quality QB who can use Welker just as well as TFB could, not to mention Denver has additional weapons.  WR's that the Patriots can only dream of at this point, unless they make a move and pick up a very solid deep threat.  And the Broncos are fixing other problems too.  The have had a very nice and strong FA period thus far.

The Patriots need to improve.  A defense which has struggled for far to long has not improved much over a span of several years.  The WR position has not been fixed since Moss left.  The Cold Hard Facts are the Patriots need to be aggressive here and sign quality players, not quantity of players like we have witnessed time and time again. 

There are teams getting much better right now, Bronco's included, and believe me.. I do not want to see the the Patriots and TFB ever lose to Peyton Manning.  It's time to go all in, I hope they make some solid signing's.

dreighver -

A couple things

1) I don't think you can discount the injury prone so quickly. The Pats have an artifical field (though a slightly more advanced one) but those injures weren't caused by the field. For some reason injury prone players are injury prone for a reason. It doesn't matter if it's broken bones, muscles, or seperated shoulders for some reason when a player has the bug they get injured a lot and Amendola is injured a lot.

2) You can't discount the chemistry. We can compare Welkers numbers (pre Pats) to Amendoal's all we want but Ocho had great numbers too before coming to the Pats. We have no clue what Amendola will proved coming to the Pats. At best things remain the same at worst Amendola provides what Ocho provided.

3) We just lost our #1 receiver to our biggest threat in the conference over $1mil dollars. Think about that for a second. Imagine losing Seguin or Bergeron to Montreal for $1mil or Pedroia to the Yankees for $1mil. It's not like they were miles apart we are talking less then 1% of the cap difference to your biggest competition.

4) We paid just as much for Amendola as we did for Welker so it's not like we even saved money to go out and be able to sign extra players. Honestly where are the needs being filled? DBs are flying off the market and the most we are hearing is about Washingtington?

IF Amendola stays healthy he could be good (thats a gamble)

IF he has similar chemistry to Brady he could replace Welker (that's a gamble)

IF this was a cost savings move to add to the D I would understand (they didn't save money)

IF this was to change the offensive philosphy I would understand (Amendola is the closest thing to Welker on the market)

but all of the above aren't true. The truth is we just paid the same amount of money to the second option on the market for the next similar player.

If Amendola was so much better then Welker then why didn't Den target him and why didn't the Pats sign him before waiting for Welker to decide?

I think it's clear that BB/Pats chose Amedola over Welker.  They signed a guy with more question marks to a long term deal and let the guy who is a sure thing depart over a what ended up to be a no-brainer contract.  It seems that the personnel brain trust expect Amedola to come in here and match WW's output, which is a gamble.  Not sure I buy letting Wes walk over a few dollars, but at least they got somebody with upside to replace Wes.

And I don't want to hear "what have we won with WW?" or "he dropped the ball when it mattered".  Without him, I am not so sure the Pats have a shot at two more superbowls over the last few years.   

dreighver -

A couple things

1) I don't think you can discount the injury prone so quickly. The Pats have an artifical field (though a slightly more advanced one) but those injures weren't caused by the field. For some reason injury prone players are injury prone for a reason. It doesn't matter if it's broken bones, muscles, or seperated shoulders for some reason when a player has the bug they get injured a lot and Amendola is injured a lot.

2) You can't discount the chemistry. We can compare Welkers numbers (pre Pats) to Amendoal's all we want but Ocho had great numbers too before coming to the Pats. We have no clue what Amendola will proved coming to the Pats. At best things remain the same at worst Amendola provides what Ocho provided.

3) We just lost our #1 receiver to our biggest threat in the conference over $1mil dollars. Think about that for a second. Imagine losing Seguin or Bergeron to Montreal for $1mil or Pedroia to the Yankees for $1mil. It's not like they were miles apart we are talking less then 1% of the cap difference to your biggest competition.

4) We paid just as much for Amendola as we did for Welker so it's not like we even saved money to go out and be able to sign extra players. Honestly where are the needs being filled? DBs are flying off the market and the most we are hearing is about Washingtington?

IF Amendola stays healthy he could be good (thats a gamble)

IF he has similar chemistry to Brady he could replace Welker (that's a gamble)

IF this was a cost savings move to add to the D I would understand (they didn't save money)

IF this was to change the offensive philosphy I would understand (Amendola is the closest thing to Welker on the market)

but all of the above aren't true. The truth is we just paid the same amount of money to the second option on the market for the next similar player.

If Amendola was so much better then Welker then why didn't Den target him and why didn't the Pats sign him before waiting for Welker to decide?