The Pats won a championship while Gronk was on the IR, they won with superweapons like 7th round pick Edelman, 8th round pick Troy Brown, and UDFA’s like David Patten and Amendola.
Other weapons who don’t qualify for this mystical “#1 WR” designation funny enough don’t simply lay down and die because they weren’t voted on the popular kids list. In fact a group of 4-5 simply "good" WR’s and a TE can be just as dangerous.
I was listening to the GM Shuffle podcast and Mike Lombardi made a very good point, he said he asked an NFL defensive coordinator how many #1 WR’s there were in the league that you specifically design defenses around… the guy said maybe three.
This notion that one WR has to be so dangerous that teams quake at the mention of their name is nonsense. Randy Moss, Deandre Hopkins, Julio Jones, Larry Fitzgerald, Calvin Johnson… none of them have a ring.
Whatever the Patriots have now is enough if they stay healthy, Mac plays well and Obie does his job.