Re: WR - if we re-sign Edelman and Lloy, are we stronger at WR than we were last se
I think you would have to say weaker, and right now considerably. Welker's strength was his durability, consistency and chemistry with Brady. Until Amendola can show any of those things I think its a major downgrade. If he stays healthy and build that relationship with Brady then I don't think the drop off will be that far, but I certainly don't think he will ever be as good as Wes Welker.
I don't see Lloyd back, but even if he does come back his production will be much lower. The only reason he put up decent looking numbers is because of the number of targets he got while we fed him the ball trying to get him going in the offense. Now we know what we have in him Brady won't give him anywhere near the amount of targets and his numbers will drop considerably. I don't think cutting him was purely about money, I just don't think he is as good as we thought and not worth the headache.
I like Edelman and would re-sign him, but he isn't a primary target and his value mainly comes from his versatility. Right now I think Jones is 50/50 even making the roster so I wouldn't consider him an upgrade over anyone, even Branch. While Branch may not have had anything physically, he still had that connection with Brady. Overall I think our WR group has taken a step back so far, which is a concern considering I thought it was our 2nd biggest need going into free agency. Things can certainly change though with the draft.
With the depth and talent of this WR draft class I would love to get two guys in the 2nd/3rd round. Then maybe a late round or UDFA to compete in camp as well. Sign some vets for competition and then we could have the makings of a decent WR group. Ideally we could have something like this:
WR- Amendola
WR- Edelman
WR- 2nd round pick (Hopkins, Hunter, Wheaton)
WR- 3rd round pick (Rogers, T. Williams, Patton)
WR- Jones/vet FA/late round pick (Marquess Wilson)
To me that is starting to look pretty good. We still don't really have any guys with chemistry with Brady, but hopefully no Welker forces Brady to move the ball around a bit more.