That's simply not true. Welker demands a better cover corner than Stokley does, and also commands help. And if a team tries to play him in the same way that it would play Stokley, he will burn them far more than Stokley is capable of.
Stokley's no doubt a geriatric scrub, last year included. Welker will be replacing his role as the fourth option and first WR off the field when the Broncos aren't in their 3-WR sets. That's not to say Welker won't outproduce Stokley, he will because he's the better player, but teams rarely devote that much defensive gameplanning and scheming for such a player in Wes' role, especially when they're bigger threats to worry about.
Priority #1 is Demaryius because he's the biggest threat. One of the least prioritized in scheming would be Wes because he's the lesser threat.
9 first downs and 3 touchdowns in two games. How on earth is that an afterthought? Neither team that's played the Broncos so far has made covering Julius Thomas or Eric Decker a higher priority than neutralizing Welker, and that's not going to change anytime soon.
His stats look great in isolation, but without proper context regarding how teams are defending the other targets, what their scheming to take away (deep stuff, big plays, etc.) those numbers don't always tell the entire story.
Teams are giving the Broncos all that underneath stuff because they fear getting beat downfield, as they should. If they make a concerted effort to shut down the underneath stuff, then they'll open themselves up to more big plays. Basically, pick your poison.
In the mind of a defense, big plays are worse than small gains. Wes is a not big play threat so he's not the primary focus of their scheming/assignments. Teams don't go into the game saying, "we gotta try all of our might to stop that Welker guy and leave ourselves vulnerable to big plays because Welker catching 5 yard dumps off are worse than allowing Demaryius to get big plays on us."
On paper the Broncos have a formidable offense. Nonetheless, I wanna see them in inclement weather In Dec/Jan once Manning's arm strength really falls off the cliff and teams have no real fear of their big plays downfield.
And to think that last year I was far more critical of Welker than 90% of this forum. Feels kinda weird to be in the position of defending him now, but I'm not surprised because this is what always happens with former players. Was the same way with Seymour and Asante.
I thought Wes subtly started to show signs of decline in 2010 from that point on. Not a lot of people agreed with that at the time though. Funny how a couple of drop balls chances everyone's perspective. I often times think, what would the perception of him be had he caught that pass against the Giants?
He's one the greatest Patriots of all time from a statistical perspective, but he wasn't really very clutch when the team absolutely needed him to be. That's why I'll never put him up there with the likes of Troy Brown.
