Ty Law,Deion Branch and Seymour were in their primes when they left...the front office does not care who you are,if you are a problem regarding cap space and refuse to adapt to it...you are gone.
No player in NE is worth sacrificing the near future and Welker despite being a star player is no exception,you accept the offer or see ya bye bye.
Welker could be added to that group by summer
Ty Law left here in a wheel chair after missing half a season recovering from high ankle sprain surgery because he refused to restructure the last 2 years of his pre BB deal into a 4 year deal to avoid another $12M+ cap hit against an $82M cap. Although Bill did keep chasing him to re-up on that restructured deal to no avail for 2-3 seasons.
Branch left because they miscalculated his resolve and his market and by the time they realized it it was too late to backtrack.
Seymour had little to do with cap space. He simply hadn't lived up to his potential on or off the field since 2005 and he was becoming a negative leader in the locker room. Similar situation to his mentor, Milloy, only Richard wasn't even asked to restructure because they knew it was pointless.
Welker will be gone for the same reason Asante was. They simply do not want to pay market for the position (which as in Asante's case doesn't bode well for the secondary replacement either). And while tagged both failed to make a play, or in Asante's case a couple of plays, that seemingly would have resulted in a Championship. Both could have been signed to reasonably priced long term deals a year or two before being tagged. And who knows, maybe then they'd have been better able to focus. Welker in particular had earned one. But once that ship sailed it was essentially over.
The only time they paid market for an elite WR here it came back to bite them in the ass because they never got value for that contract and by the end of it the player was becoming problematic on and off the field. They've since made it back to a Superbowl once and back to an AFCC game twice absent both the elite deep threat and a pro bowl corner with identical results so I think they don't believe investing in those players yields the kind of results they are looking for.
I think they are continuing to grapple with what it is that does. They thought having two TE's who project as elite weapons particularly in the red zone and adding talent at RB would do the trick. Only the two TE's can't stay healthy let alone in tandem and their backups can't remotely replicate their production and the young RB's have been a work in progress with that progress taking longer than they anticipated. They seemingly upgraded outside the numbers but that didn't translate either. And to add insult to injury while honing the blade on his swiss army knife the tip broke off...
This team needs to add or upgrade talent, addition by subtraction is only going to make the future even more susceptible to random.
On defense they added to the pass rush and reconfigured the secondary but again injury mitigated most of what they believed they had accomplished.
Welcome to the NFL where in the end much of what is accomplished is seemingly random, the thing Belichick truly abhors.
