A few things:
1) A little over a year ago, they won a Super Bowl with this offense, beating a great defense. Nobody this time last year was complaining about the offensive line. The receiving corps had had a great playoff run. Amendola, who everyone is ripping now, played a key role. He was worth his contract on the basis of those playoffs alone. And even so, he took a pay cut after the season.
2) Fast forward to the first 8-10 games of this season, and the Pats are putting up historic offensive numbers. A big reason is the addition of Lewis, who proves to be an upgrade over Vereen. So at the halfway point of last season, the offense is ahead of the Super Bowl team.
3) Then everybody gets injured: Lewis, Edelman, Solder, Gronkowski , Cannon, Blount, even Dobson. The interior linemen also all take turns getting hurt. This is in addition to a host of lesser players like Brandon Gibson who got hurt early on. That puts them down not just to backups, but backups to backups. They sign elderly Steven Jackson off the street to start at running back. Still, they lose by just two points to the eventual champs in the AFC title game.
4) Now it's March and everyone's in a panic because the team isn't spending a gazillion dollars on backups who can step in and save the day should they once again suffer a dozen injuries to the offense.
It's insane. Healthy, this is the best offense in the league. One could argue that they were undone by a lack of good backups at tackle, but that's certainly not a problem they can solve in free agency, where starting-caliber player will cost a fortune (and wouldn't come here anyway, with no job open on either side). Also they're already spending $15m a year between Solder and Vollmer. As for receivers: between Gronk, Edelman and Lewis, they have three dynamic skill guys, and a fourth, Amendola, who's been very productive in a difficult offense.
Would it be good to have more talented players behind them? Yes! Are you going to find them in free agency? Not likely! First of all, there wasn't one receiver in this FA class better than Edelman or Gronk. If there had been someone like that out there, a Dez Bryant say, we could maybe have debated the idea of spending $80 million or whatever to get him and knock Edelman back to a #2 option.
But there was no such person, so the only thing we're arguing about is whether or not to spend $8m a year on a guy like Marvin Jones who would be the #3 option at best here. The idea is ridiculous. The only possible way to go here is to do what they're doing: bottom-feed in search of a bounce back candidate or an upside play who might turn into this year's Lewis, only at the WR position.
That, and drafting a player who hopefully can show up if one of the vets gets hurt are the only real options here. If Randy Moss is available for a fourth-round pick, I'm sure they'll grab him. Otherwise, what exactly does anyone want them to do? Give Rishard Matthews $6 million?
There's a reason only a few teams (Pittsburgh, Arizona) have more than 3 really good receivers. Those guys are hard to get. And none of them were available in FA this year. Gambling on a big, durable young athlete like Hogan is pretty much the extent of what they could do, and I bet they hated having to shell out as much as they did to do even that.
