Via ESPN: ”New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft was unusually revealing Monday in lamenting receiver Wes Welker’s defection to the Denver Broncos, saying the team wanted the receiver back and placing the blame squarely on the shoulders of Welker’s agents.”
The whole article is a pretty good read, though I don’t believe a word of it. See I think Robert Kraft is a pretty awesome guy who has done some pretty awesome things, but this is a low blow all the way. The New England Patriots blew it with Welker long before he inked his two year deal with the Broncos. When Bill Belichick decided some time in the last few years that Welker wasn’t worth the long term deal, this relationship was strained and it never recovered. All Welker wanted was a decent deal from the team he had helped set records for over the last five years. That deal never came and now on the heels of Welker bolting for none other than Peyton Manning and the Broncos, Kraft is backtracking big time.
More from the article: (this is a quote from Kraft) “But I really believe in this case, his agents misrepresented, in their mind, what his market value was. When you come right down to the bottom line, he accepted a deal in Denver which is less money than what we offered him. In fact, he has a one-year deal in Denver for $6 million. Our last offer, before we would have even gone up and before we thought we were going into free agency, was a $10 million offer with incentives that would have earned him another $6 million if he performed the way he had the previous two years. But in Denver, he’s going to count $4 million against the cap this coming year and $8 million the second year. There is no guarantee that he plays the second year there. He will get $6 million the first year. Our deal, he would have gotten $8 million the first year”
Really? So why did you go out and give Amendola a deal prior to the Welker deal if you were prepared to “have even gone up” on the money you would have given Welker? If the incentives were so obtainable, why didn’t you just give him those extra millions? He’s definitely been worth it over the past 5 seasons, correct? You mean you don’t think that if Welker is even 80% of what he was last year the Broncos aren’t bringing him back for year 2? Even if he struggles a bit and the Broncos cut him, you don’t think he can get more than $4 million on the open market? This is such a shitty move by such a class guy that I’m blown away this has even surfaced.
In the end, business is business, but there is a lot of the blame game in this article and I think this is a lame way for the Patriots to react; especially a week after the deal went down.
