Available Recievers?

The forum pessimism is getting to me - when I first saw this topic out of the corner of my eye, I'd swear it said, "Amendola Released" :crazy:

Guys give the rookies a chance. They have 10 days to break down their mistakes, and for them to get help from Tom and the coaches. They didn't have much time to correct the first weeks mistakes. Now with this long week, we should see improvement in TB.

The offense looked worse than it was. 2 catches and a clean FG hold and we put 30 points up. Not bad without gronk, amendola, and vereen.

supafly said:

Interesting to see people constantly bring up Welker (certainly not meaning to single anyone out). While I definitely think his presence would have helped, I also think that we'd be having the same discussion regarding the other receivers, or lack thereof to put it bluntly.

I'm not sure that Welker would have been able to do much more than Amendola (10 catches) and Edelman (13 catches) in the first 2 games. That doesn't mean that I don't miss him, or that I don't think he'd have helped more, just that Welker seems to be the go-to guy in many of these discussions and that is somewhat suprising to me.

The problem may have been letting Llyod walk, not offering Sanders more to guarantee PIT not being able to match, and/or just bringing in too many rookies in the same year. This of course was coupled with the TE situation which only made things worse, but I'm personally not as worried about the loss of Welker and the slot position at the current moment.

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The problem is you are measuring Welker/Edelman by number of catches, rather than quality of catches.
Edelman can rarely do more than catch a screen or short slant the D is playing off and allowing. Edelmans 13 catches were simply not productive. 3 yards on 2nd and 10 is a victory for the defense, they will let him have those all day.
Welker threatened a defense, Edelman caught short passes in front of a defense that was OK giving up 3 yard throws.
If Welker played, and got 18 targets, they would have been different routes, more productive and added up to a much better offensive day.
The offense was limited by not having other people to throw to, but it was much more limited by the limitations of the man they were throwing to.

Wax Frog said:

The forum pessimism is getting to me - when I first saw this topic out of the corner of my eye, I'd swear it said, "Amendola Released" :crazy:

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They want the same guys back that barely got open when they were here ...

Like taking Advil just in case you might get a headache.

Is Devery Henderson still out there? I think another vet would go a long way.

Apparently NE never called Lloyd despite what previous reports said.

AndyJohnson said:

The problem is you are measuring Welker/Edelman by number of catches, rather than quality of catches.
Edelman can rarely do more than catch a screen or short slant the D is playing off and allowing. Edelmans 13 catches were simply not productive. 3 yards on 2nd and 10 is a victory for the defense, they will let him have those all day.
Welker threatened a defense, Edelman caught short passes in front of a defense that was OK giving up 3 yard throws.
If Welker played, and got 18 targets, they would have been different routes, more productive and added up to a much better offensive day.
The offense was limited by not having other people to throw to, but it was much more limited by the limitations of the man they were throwing to.

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I wouldn't disagree with anything you've said. I find it very reasonable and actually have thought of it myself.

I think that my point in general was that we'd still have the majority of these problems even with Welker here, and that it's a popular misconception that things would be solved with his presence alone. He'd be receiving a lot more attention and it would definitely come down to other options, much the same as now.

I will definitely agree that we'd be getting "more" production from having Welker, but I also don't agree with many people feeling as though that's our main problem. Amendola was pretty efficient in my opinion last week, producing in many of the examples that you stated in your post, yet we still had a lot of issues in the other parts of our offensive game outside of the success running the ball.

Many here could end up dealing with the change if we'd be getting production from other parts of our offense. It's possible that will occur when Gronk and Amendola return. At the moment it may be a bit exaggerated with the lessened running game, failure to even target the TE's, and obvious problems with the rookie receivers.

KoolAid said:

Is Devery Henderson still out there? I think another vet would go a long way.

Apparently NE never called Lloyd despite what previous reports said.

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If Devery Henderson were an option in Belichick's mind, don't you think he'd have targeted him in the spring when Henderson could have time to actually learn the playbook, go through spring OTA's/mini camp, and have the benefit of learning the offense under the tutelage of Brady via training camp all summer long?

If Belichick would have wanted any of these free agent receivers, he'd have brought them in when the learning period was at its highest, not when they'd have to come in and start from scratch which would actually put them behind the rookie wide receivers.

At this point the options are much more limited than the average fan seems to understand. We're stuck either continuing to try and develop the new rookies, or at best they can explore the option of trying to bring someone like Branch/Stallworth etc in who already know the system and could possibly step in immediately. The problem with that scenario is that it would then limit the growth of the rookies, and we'd be back to square one in terms of the lack of talent.

Brewskies said:

Simple put that's not going to happen. These are kids with little experience will improve but not enough. When they start to catching a few balls (TB game) Atlanta will come in and destroy them, followed by Cinn. and then the closing kill will be NO. Pats took a risk and failed to date. They will win the division. Playoffs are another story.

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Thank you for taking some time off from travelling into the future to post about this. I'll alert the Patriots organization immediately.

As I predicted, The Jets put their best corner on Thompkins, Thus taking him out of the game. They doubled Edelman because they had no threat from the TE position. Add Gronk to the mix and its a completly differnt game.

The Pats need to simplify the game for the rookies. Tom Brady needs to get his emotions in check and be supportive of these rookies. Brady has alot of fault here too. He led Thomkins out of bounds on a deep pass. He is not a good long passer. Teams play him in 20 yard box because he can't throw long.

Lets give the Jets some credit here too! Their front 7 is very good and they shut down the Pats running game.

Its a learning experince for the rookies. I think this team will be better given some time. I see them at 3-3 and then the season begins. 2-0 in the division is huge. The defense is good enought to keep them in games.

Brewskies said:

Simple put that's not going to happen. These are kids with little experience will improve but not enough. When they start to catching a few balls (TB game) Atlanta will come in and destroy them, followed by Cinn. and then the closing kill will be NO. Pats took a risk and failed to date. They will win the division. Playoffs are another story.

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I agree, but are you sure about that winning the division thing?

captain stone said:

I agree, but are you sure about that winning the division thing?

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As you yourself would say, Captain--we shouldn't "ass-ume" anything, but I'd have to think that the odds would be fairly good.

It may be more of a 10-6 season though, which will have its trying moments but isn't the end of the world. Hopefully they are an improved team with Gronk coming back and 10 days of practice. Belichick will act as if they lost this game terribly during practice and film study.

I hope you're right, but you just gotta know that Miami is absolutely licking its collective chops
waiting to face us.

Tomorrow will be one of the very few days during which I will be rooting for the Indy Clots
to win a game.

captain stone said:

I hope you're right, but you just gotta know that Miami is absolutely licking its collective chops
waiting to face us.

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Well they have to wait a month and a half, when both Amendola and Gronk will be back, assuming no major setbacks for either.

captain stone said:

I hope you're right, but you just gotta know that Miami is absolutely licking its collective chops
waiting to face us.

Tomorrow will be one of the very few days during which I will be rooting for the Indy Clots
to win a game.

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As Deus touched on in another thread, here is a glimpse of MIA's upcoming games, so this is a very good reason not to be too worried in my opinion:

--AT Indy

--Atlanta

--AT New Orleans

--Baltimore

--Buffalo

--AT New England

--Cincinnati

Those are 6 of the next 7 games versus playoff opponents, so I'm not going to sweat Miami too badly myself.

If worst comes to worst and they do win the division, then we'll definitely still have the opportunity to win one of the two WC spots, but we're a long way off from worrying about that at 2-0 with 2 divisional wins already.

2 wins into a rebuilt offense and a bunch of chicken littles want to blow up the team to bring in some old wide receivers that no other teams want.

Everyone take a breath, This is going exactly as its supposed to

Hard, but required.

Give the rookies the Targets that have to have in game situations to get them the experience they need.

chasa said:

...Everyone take a breath, This is going exactly as its supposed to...

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No, it's not, and pretending otherwise is both needless and foolish.

AndyJohnson said:

The problem is you are measuring Welker/Edelman by number of catches, rather than quality of catches.
Edelman can rarely do more than catch a screen or short slant the D is playing off and allowing. Edelmans 13 catches were simply not productive. 3 yards on 2nd and 10 is a victory for the defense, they will let him have those all day.
Welker threatened a defense, Edelman caught short passes in front of a defense that was OK giving up 3 yard throws.
If Welker played, and got 18 targets, they would have been different routes, more productive and added up to a much better offensive day.
The offense was limited by not having other people to throw to, but it was much more limited by the limitations of the man they were throwing to.

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You know what, I wrote out a huge, long post to give you some facts because you're a world-renowned cherry-picker. So I'll give you the short version.

Things like Edelman completely de-cleating Cromartie and being wide open for a 50 yard TD if Brady didn't miss him completely. Which would have given him 2 plays of 20+ while Welker has none. It would actually be 3 of 20+ if his spectacular effort on a 3rd and 15 didn't get called back for holding. He still has 1 more than Welker despite that.

Or that Welker has less ypc than Edelman, even including his gift 10 yards that B-More stupidly didn't challenge.

But you have the rest of your life to argue minutiae and I'm tired so I'll just say the haters are going to hate.

It's pathetic that we couldn't give Emmanuel Sanders a better offer. He would have been a darn good receiver in this system--he wasn't expensive at all.

Deus Irae said:

No, it's not, and pretending otherwise is both needless and foolish.

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It's certainly not but given the injuries it's a hell of a lot better than it could be.

But this isn't going to get it done against the Atlanta and Saints of the league.

bostonia3333 said:

It's pathetic that we couldn't give Emmanuel Sanders a better offer. He would have been a darn good receiver in this system--he wasn't expensive at all.

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Their offer was fine. It was enough that it would have been stupid for the Steelers to match, but they did anyway. The Steelers currently have only $1.5M in cap room this season, are already over the projected cap for next season with only 40 players under contract, and are going nowhere this season. Belichick offered to give them an extra pick to start their rebuilding process, but they were delusional to think they needed to keep Sanders and attempt to make a run. Outside of making it impossible for them to match (which we know now would have taken about a $4M offer), there's not really anything you can do except hope the other teams makes the right decision for their future, and they didn't.