What happened during the course of that 19-minute question-and-answer session at the NFL meetings, in a shaded courtyard at the Arizona Biltmore, was an explanation of what happened during the Welker negotiations through the Patriots’ eyes.

Right off the bat, Kraft was asked about Welker.

“We usually don’t talk about contracts, but I’d like to clear up what I think is some misconceptions about the Wes situation,” Kraft began. “I’ll go into limited financial details. You know, everyone in our organization wanted Wes Welker back. Anyone who doubts that, or thinks we weren’t serious just doesn’t get it.

“I’ve owned the team 19 years and I’ve known in the end we have to have certain limits and restraints. Like I’ve said many times, I really wanted Wes to be with us through the rest of his career, but it takes two sides to do a deal. The only person in my life who had unlimited financial ability to do whatever they wanted was my late, sweet wife [Myra]. Everything else has boundaries.”

Even with those boundaries, Kraft believed the Patriots’ offer to Welker was very fair.

“In Wes’s case, we were willing to go what we considered above his market value. For a couple years, we tried to get a long-term deal done with him,” Kraft said. “We couldn’t do a deal and we wound up franchising him at a very high number [$9.5 million for 2012].

“In retrospect, I wish we could have wrapped that into an arrangement where it was part of a longer-term deal. But I really believe in this case, his agents misrepresented, in their mind, what his market value was. When you come right down to the bottom line, he accepted a deal in Denver that is less money than what we offered him.

“In fact, he has a one-year deal in Denver for $6 million. Our last offer, before we would have even gone up and before we thought we were going into free agency, was a $10 million offer with incentives that would have earned him another $6 million if he performed the way he had the previous two years. But in Denver, he’s going to count $4 million against the cap this coming year and $8 million the second year. There is no guarantee that he plays the second year there. He will get $6 million the first year. Our deal, he would have gotten $8 million the first year, our last offer to him.

“So in fact, our offer was better than what in fact he got from Denver.”

It’s not possible to see what the Patriots’ offer to Welker was — an offer that wasn’t submitted until Monday night, a day before free agency opened — but looking at the contract backs up Kraft’s claim.

Welker’s two-year contract included a $4 million signing bonus, and his $2 million salary for 2013 is fully guaranteed — so at a minimum he’ll get $6 million from Denver.

(Signing bonuses can be spread over the life of a contract, which is why Welker’s cap number is only $4 million for ’13 — the salary plus half of the signing bonus.)

But it is possible the receiver will only be with the Broncos for one year: at the moment, Welker’s $3 million salary for 2014 is only guaranteed for injury — if he’s hurt while playing, the team has to pay it — but it only becomes fully guaranteed if he is on the roster for the first day of the 2014 league year; he also has a $3 million roster bonus that is only guaranteed for injury.

What that means: if it is nearing the end of the 2013 league year and the Broncos don’t want to have a receiver about to turn 33 with an $8 million cap number, they can simply release him. Welker would only count $2 million against the cap in that case, the second half of his signing bonus.

Later, Kraft again pointed to that $8 million cap number and insinuated Welker could be released after one year.

Kraft said he’s sad that Welker had to leave, and insisted that everyone in the Patriots’ organization wanted the franchise’s leader in receptions to remain in New England.

“Wes Welker, just to be very clear, was our first choice to be with the team. When free agency came, his agents [Welker is represented by Athletes First, one of the most powerful agencies in the NFL] kept insisting on a very high number that was beyond our number, we had to go work alternatives.