Personally, I would love to have a Gaffney or someone comprehible as the #4 WR, but I think people have unrealistic standards for what a a depth chart for WRs looks like these days. The #4 WR is usually a special teamer who can be on the field for 5-15 plays and catch one ball a game.
Some of it depends on what Branch gives us right now. Branch might have ESP with Brady, but he is limited in where he attacks the field now. I would argue Gaffney can attack the deep area of the field much better. Between the two of them, you have a nice complementary pair, and some welcome redundancy. Simpler put, Gaffney is another guy who can do damage outside of the hash marks.
This might, as you point out, be a luxury. But we have plenty of STers at RB, LB & DB, as well as WR5 & WR6. So the necessity that WR4 be an STer is not there to me.
Everyone looks to the Super Bowl for answers for what is and what isn't wrong with this team. It's an interesting case study, because on the one hand, the deficiencies of the Patriots roster were on clear display. But on the other, the game was ours for the taking with better execution. Why did we lose that game?
1)
Luck. Dumb luck. Fumbles bounce away from Patriot defenders. It's out of our control.
2)
Execution. The Giants executed just slightly better than we did. They have a stacked roster. That is out of the control of Belichick the GM. Brady and Welker could've made that pass & catch. Mayo could've picked off Manning if he turns his head around. JPP or whoever sticks his hand up right when Brady throws in the red zone. Manningham taps his toe in bounds. No roster building can account for those kind of moments. Therefore, I declare this one, "out of our control."
That's really why we lost the Super Bowl, that's why we came up short. No roster is absent of deficiencies, can we blame roster building for the loss? No, of course not.
But that doesn't mean we sit on our hands and do nothing. So, the question to me becomes, which deficiencies can we most realistically address so as to reduce the impact of these variances in luck and execution come January and February next year? What, realistically, can we do to make a strong team stronger? How can we fare better against comparably strong opponents, such as the Giants?
Can we make the secondary better? Obviously that was a weakspot. We're trying. But that's very difficult. We've tried via the draft. It's not easy in this pass first league that favors offense in the rulebook. We've had little success.
Can we make the pass rush better? Again, we're throwing everything against the wall, we've loaded up, but there's no guarantees it will work.
Can we have a better running attack, more balanced approach on offense? Easier said that done. There are only a few true gamechangers at RB in the league. We have not happened upon one yet.
Can we have a deeper receiving corp so that the Giants can't simply attack the center of the field where our best skill players do their damage? Yes. Yes, this is by far the easiest and simplest problem there is to fix given we have veteran Wide Receivers with experience in this system lining up to play with TB12, Bill and McD. Would we have won the SB with a deeper receiving group? Yes. The failure of Ocho to contribute ultimately did matter in the end. We were one weapon short in SB46 with a hobbled Gronk, and we couldn't stretch the field. Brandon Lloyd should be the answer. But if his injury results in this being a question mark again, isn't it worth just carrying Gaffney to ensure we have depth there to keep this question answered? Isn't that easier than all the hand-wringing over building a secondary or conjuring up a pass-rush? Yes.
Belichick identified the easiest way to improve the roster and went after it aggressively this past offseason. In the past few days, he's undone that a bit. It makes me nervous. But I trust him, and I am sure he has a plan. I just think we need to acknowledge the importance of WR depth on this team - and how it is, right now at least, basically the simplest issue to address.
