That's the biggest load of B.S. I've ever heard. Synovia, really???
The Patriots moved on from Welker quite some time ago, and to say anything differently is just plain silly.
While the rest of the NFL circles threw around potential numbers such as 3/27 and 4/40, the Patriots:
1. Decided not to match DEN's offer of 2/12......it's highly reported that Welker and his reps went back to NE one final time after DEN's 2/12 offer, so they could have easily given him another million dollars making it a 2/11 offer instead of the ridiculous 2/10. By raising it another million dollars to 2/11, it likely would have prevented Welker from taking DEN's offer, especially since NE was offering more guaranteed money in the first year at 8.5m.
2. The fact that they highly pursued Danny Amendola from the legal tampering period on Saturday at midnight kind of spells out the writing on the wall pretty nicely. They never intended on keeping both Amendola and Welker. There's no way they were prepared to give them both 5m+ a year for primarily the same player in the slot. They damn well knew that Welker was moving on, and they didn't offer him anything close to "reasonable" for a player of his magnitude. Denver got a bargain, plain and simple.
Unless you're claiming that after many years of production, consistancy, and hard work without missing any days equates to your company suddenly deciding that you weren't worth much of anything, I fail to see the comparison on any level. Welker was one of the more prized offensive possessions of the free agent period. The Pats didn't decide to give Kyle Arrington 16 million dollars, or Danny Amendola 31 million dollars only to "offer" Wes Welker 10, while expecting him to actually take it....
I don't disagree or have a problem with the handling of the Welker negotiations, but let's call it like it was....the team wasn't preparing to keep Wes Welker on much of any level.
It was definitely primarily their decision to let him go. The guy was an iron clad tough guy here for 6 seasons, and led the NFL in total receptions during that time while rarely missing a game.
I understand the difference between the slot position and the outside position, but production is production. When players who are way less productive like Larry Fitzgerald are being paid 140 million dollars, Wes Welker was offered TEN by the N.England Patriots.
At the exact same time, they courted Danny Amendola from day one during the legal tampering period, which wasn't done for no good reason. The team had planned to move on, and that was that. They could've so easily offered him 2/11 instead of 2/10 and he very likely would have stayed here instead of going to Denver. It was more than obvious that Welker was holding on and hard as he could to try and stay here, but the team just wouldn't budge on any level from what everyone in their right mind sees as a pretty low offer.
The bottom line is that Belichick and the front office decided that one million more dollars, or even throwing in some additional incentives, weren't worth keeping Welker around, and that Amendola was the ideal candidate for the future--as told by their decision to give him a deal worth more than 3x as much as Welker. I think that pretty much says all we need to know about the situation.
