What happened to the teams' game-day gauges?

As most of you know, Walt Anderson’s best recollection is that he used the “logo gauge” to measure the footballs before the AFC Championship game, and, assuming this is the case, eight of the 11 Patriot footballs that were measured at halftime fell within the pressure range predicted by the Ideal Gas Law, as calculated by the Wells Report, which would indicate that there was no tampering. 

No surprise, then, that the Wells Report takes great pains to tell us that Anderson must have misremembered. The Patriots reported that, prior to the game, their footballs were set to 12.5 PSI; the Colts reported that theirs were set to 13.0. Sure enough, when Anderson gauged the balls, his best recollection (he didn’t write the measurements down) was that the Patriots’ balls were at or near 12.5, and the Colts’ were at or near 13.0. So it must have been the non-logo gauge, you see, because during testing, the non-logo gauge read similarly to the 50 other sample gauges that Exponent studied, more similarly than the logo gauge did.

This being the case, Exponent assumed that the non-logo gauge must also be similar to the gauges used by both the Colts and the Pats, hence the similarities in Anderson’s readings as compared to that of the two teams’. The logo gauge read higher than all other gauges tested, Wells said, so in all likelihood, if Anderson was using the logo gauge, his readings would have been noticeably higher than those reported by the two teams. Instead, Anderson’s readings matched those of the teams almost exactly.

But  why are we “assuming” anything, no matter how sound the logic? Shouldn’t we simply test the actual gauges used by the Patriots and the Colts, as compared to the logo and non-logo gauges? Wouldn’t that resolve the debate immediately?

I scoured the entire Wells Report to find out if Wells made any effort to find the gauges used by the Pats and Colts before the game. All I found was this, buried in footnote 36, page 65:

We believe that [James] Daniel located and used the pressure gauge supplied by the Patriots [to measure the football intercepted by D’Qwell Jackson]. We further believe that this is the gauge that John Jastremski considers his normal gauge. It has not been located since the day of the AFC Championship Game. It should be noted that we have not relied upon the air pressure measurements of the intercepted ball in any respect in reaching any conclusions set forth in this Report.

Inexplicably, there is no mention whatsoever of the Colts' game-day gauge in the report. This, as well as the above passage, raised a few questions for me:

1. Did Mr. Wells and his team make any efforts at all to locate the Patriots’ game-day gauge? For example, did they ask Daniel what was done with the gauge after he used it to measure the Jackson football? What other efforts were made to find the Patriots’ gauge? Why weren’t these efforts documented in the report? If no efforts were made, why weren’t they? Isn’t this a key piece of evidence, much more important than the 50 “exemplar” gauges that Exponent went out of their way to obtain?
2.  Why the oddly worded “It has not been located since the day of the AFC Championship Game”? Has not been located by whom? It seems to me that, if Wells et al conducted an all-out search for the gauge, and were unable to locate it, they would have said so. Instead, they carefully tiptoe around this topic. Odd.
3.  Why is there no mention whatsoever of the Colts gauge, in the entire 243-page report? Does Wells feel this gauge is unimportant, so unimportant that it doesn’t even warrant a mention? If not, then why was it left out of the report? Was this an oversight / error? 

Let me tell you what I think.

The Patriots’, and/or Colts’, game-day gauges could have (and should have) been tested alongside the logo / non-logo gauges to determine how far off they were from one another. My guess is that Exponent did this, and found that the two teams' gauges were close enough to the logo gauge to inject doubt into Exponent’s “the non-logo gauge was probably closer” narrative. Hence, they left the topic of the teams’ game-day gauges off the report almost completely, with one reference to the Patriots’ gauge buried in a footnote, and the Colts’ gauge not mentioned at all, in the hopes that no one would ask about them.

Even if you choose not to believe in the same cynical machinations that I do, what is beyond doubt is that this, at the very least, is a gross oversight by Exponent. The teams’ game-day gauges played a major role in the events of January 18, and they deserved thorough testing and examination. Instead, they have been almost totally ignored.

The "Deflator" nickname: A Jedi mind trick for trolls

Aside from soundly debunking the dubious science of the Wells Report, wellsreportcontext.com, the Patriots' 20,000-word wrecking ball against the NFL's case, also reveals the meaning behind Jim McNally's famous "come on...help out the deflator" text message to John Jastremski on 5/14/2014. Jastremski, you see, was thin and looking to bulk up ("inflate") and McNally was obese and looking to trim down ("deflate"). McNally earned himself a nickname in the process. The reaction was loud.

One critic after another lined up to reject the explanation: "Ridiculous," they said. "Embarrassing". "Lame". "Stupid". I've read dozens of critiques--maybe 100--and they all have one thing in common.

They all think it's stupid, and none of them can tell us why.

After all, if your 5-year-old tells you he didn't eat any donuts, and he's got a spray of white powder down the front of his shirt and a jelly mustache, you might laugh and tell him he should wash up before saying things like that. It's such an obvious lie that it's actually funny. Not the case here.

Is it really that ridiculous that a big, fat guy like McNally would look down at his bloated stomach and have the word "deflate" come to mind? Deep down, the haters must know that this is a lot less silly than they make it out to be. If it was that dumb, people would say why, and no one is.

But by now, you guys know me; I take nothing for granted. So I got on Google and spent about two minutes searching for "deflate" references. That's two minutes, as in 120 seconds. And even though most of that time was spent wading through Deflategate stories, I still found 15 references to weight loss that used a form of the word "deflate".

Fifteen.

I even made a fun little meme about it. See below.

You haters aren't stupid. You know the science is shaky at best. Even under the Wells Report's scenario, an imperceptible amount of air was let out of the footballs. Ultimately, there will be a battle, and spreadsheet-wielding geeks will go to war over tiny puffs of air. In the end, the only thing that will matter will be that there was a war in the first place, that the two sides are irreconcilable, and that there is not enough evidence to prove wrongdoing. That will leave the text messages.

You know how much is riding on that "Deflator" text. You know that the case would be dead without it, and now, it's looking like the case may be dead with it. If someone comes up with a plausible explanation for the nickname, the Patriots will win. Again.

So you dismiss the nickname with the best sarcastic sneer you can muster, reject it out of hand, not because it doesn't make sense (it does), not because no one's ever used the word that way before (they have), but simply because you're desperate. You repeat your rejection, possibly with a wave of your hand, like Obi-Wan might do, in the hopes that we'll fall prey to your amateur Jedi Mind Trick.

And once again, a Patriot is too smart for you.

When bakers get donut-making wrong

Reason #3,573 why the Wells Report is not worth $5 million: Control Group Recklessness.

Here's an example of an experiment with a proper control group.

1. Buy 10 brand new footballs and leave them all in the same room of your house for 24 hours.
2. Take them out of the box and number them 1-10. Measure the beginning PSIs of each.
3. Mix them up, randomly select five balls and take them outside in the cold and rain. Make sure they are stored in the same spot outside and not moved or interacted with in any way.
4. Leave them there for two hours and measure the PSI. Immediately go inside and measure the PSI of the five balls inside the house using the same gauge. Log your findings. Repeat after two more hours.
5. Calculate the decreases in the PSIs for both groups.
6. Assume that the differences you found were due to environmental conditions, as you have CONTROLLED for any other differences between the two groups.

Note how these two groups of balls were completely alike in every way before the experiment started. All brand new. All unboxed at the same time. All stored in the same place for a day. Same number of balls in eeach group. In a true experiment, there is just ONE action (e.g., taking the balls outside) done to one group, and no action done to the other; this way, you can be more certain that the action is what caused the differences you saw. We must make the two groups as similar as possible, so that the only material difference between the two is the intervention that you're testing. A true scientist is never absolutely certain of anything, so we must eliminate as much doubt as we can.

What if, instead of keeping the balls in the same room overnight, you split them up and put half in your garage, basement, or attic, or a room with a dehumidifier running, or maybe a kitchen where food was being cooked? Would you be as sure of your results? Maybe your results would be the same as the ones above, but your comfort level would not be nearly as high. There would be more doubt that other factors could have contributed to the differences you saw.

The Patriots footballs, and those of the Colts, were prepared by different people, from different teams, at different times, in different places, and they were prepared using different techniques. They were inflated to different beginning PSIs by different pumps and measured by different gauges. Yes, before kickoff, they were measured by the same referee, but this hardly nullifies any differences that existed between the footballs. After being taken outside to the field, where it was cold and rainy, the balls were stored on different sidelines and were handled and used for game play by different players on different teams for different amounts of time.

At halftime, eleven balls were selected from the Patriots' group, and four for the Colts' group, for retesting. The same official (with an assistant) measured the footballs using the same gauge (as well as another gauge), and it was disovered that the Patriots' balls had lost more PSI than the Colts' had. Exponent, the research firm hired by the NFL to study this data, declared that the Colts' footballs were a "control group". In other words, their opinion was that the two groups were exactly alike in every way, and that if there was a material difference between the PSIs, that it "more probably than not" was due to human tampering.

Based on what you have learned above, was Exponent correct about all factors being equal? Were these two groups similar enough to assume there were no material differences?

Lawrence Tynes: A Troll for All Seasons

Quick: Who was the placekicker for the Steelers during Pittsburgh's glory days in the 1970s? Who kicked the extra points after those myriad Montana-to-Rice touchdowns? Who booted the pigskin through the uprights for the '86 Chicago Bears? Or for the three Redskins teams that won the Lombardi Trophy?

I don't know either.

No matter who you root for, you  have to tip your hat to the New York Giants teams of 2007 and 2011. They weren't favored to win a championship either year, not even after they made the playoffs, but their defense found a groove, holding their opponents to an overall average of 15 points per game for both playoff runs. True, the offense only managed 23 points per game during those runs, but they put points on the board when they had to, including 4th-quarter / OT comebacks in FIVE of the eight games. Clearly, the offense, and the defense, has bragging rights if they want them.

Notice I said offense and defense, not special teams.

Perhaps if I logged onto Twitter and saw that Justin Tuck or Eli Manning, you know, players who actually contributed to the Giants' wins, was talking smack about the New England Patriots, I might understand. But these men were silent--and Lawrence Tynes, a kicker, was shooting off his mouth:

A quick look at Tynes' Twitter profile shows that he identifies himself as an "OT Playoff FG Bad-Ass" and features a picture of Tynes holding aloft one of the Giants' Lombardi Trophies. Instantly I was reminded of the John Steinbeck quote: "The less we have, the more we are required to brag", and the old proverb, "An empty cart rattles loudly". Yes, I know, Tynes played on two championship teams. I also know that Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, and Tom Brady combined don't boast nearly as much as Tynes does.

Judging by his tweets, Tynes was brimming with confidence about the game. So imagine his horror when Malcolm Butler stoned the Seahawks on the goal line! The best he could manage was this:

Ohh, I see. So we're playing the good sport now, are we? And we're all going to shake hands and go home? Just like we would have if the Patriots lost? Sure. If the Patriots lost this game, Tynes would still be needling them. He's still rubbing in the Giants' victories, the last of which was three years ago! So sorry, Lawrence, nobody's in the mood to sing Kumbaya.

I got a hunch about our buddy Mr. Tynes, like I often do about such things. Something told me he wasn't much of a kicker. Boy, was I right:

Lawrence Tynes isn't just a bad kicker. He's historically bad. He's how-the-hell-does-he-have-a-job bad. The missed PATs alone should have earned him a one-way ticket out of town, let alone his abysmal inaccuracy from 40+. Fun fact: According to espn.com, FBS 1-A kickers--these are college players, mind you--have a 76.6% average from 40-49 yards out, over 5% better than Tynes' career number from that range.

Sorry, Tynes fans, but the news isn't much better from 50 yards out. The top 30 FBS 1-A group has an impressive 62% success rate from that range--almost 15% better than your guy. Still think he should be shooting off his mouth?

But the fifth bullet point above is what really blows my mind. Twice in the closing minutes, the Giants drove to more than makeable field-goal range (43 and 36 yards, respectively), and twice, Lawrence Tynes choked the opportunities away. After losing the toss in OT, Tynes was probably considering a new career in the fast-food industry. Had the Packers come out on top, the Giants' loss would have been squarely on Tynes' head. Yes, he made the kick in OT, from a respectable 47 yards away, but that does not excuse his earlier failures. A professional kicker has one main job--to make field goals--and there is zero excuse for missing from those distances, especially not twice.

Tynes' interpretation of the above events was that he is an "OT playoff FG bad-ass". But what does this mean, exactly? That he's only good in overtime, and all the rest of the time, he sucks? I don't care what you did in OT. The game never should have gotten that far.

Oh, and lest we forget, the only other playoff OT experience Tynes has is a 31-yard kick against San Francisco. I guess, on some level, he deserves credit for this, but only in the way that a shortstop deserves credit for throwing a runner out at first on a routine ground ball.

Despite his dubious OT "heroics", Tynes is far from a clutch kicker. His accuracy is significantly worse in the playoffs (72.2%) than it is during the regular season (82.3%).

On top of everything else, Tynes is clearly a man of low character. The adolescent taunting and poor sportsmanship he displayed above is just the beginning. In 2005, Tynes was charged with a felony for punching a bar patron in the face, then punching the bouncer, breaking his nose. He was eventually let go after paying a small fine.

Tynes has also requested a presidential pardon for his brother, Mark, the kingpin of a drug-distribution syndicate that transported 3,600 pounds of marijuana from Texas to Florida, who received a 27-year sentence for his crimes. Lawrence admits that Mark is guilty, but somehow thinks that he was not treated "fairly", even though Mark refused to cooperate with prosecutors, and intimidated witnesses.

Gregg Doyel, the Most Bitter Man in America

First, a bit of context. Read:

http://www.indystar.com/story/sports/columnists/gregg-doyel/2015/02/20/doyel-everybody-lost-deflategate-including-colts/23757003/

Now, my reply.

===================================================================

Gregg, Gregg, Gregg.

You need to give this a rest, brother. It's over. You lost. And I'm not just talking about the Colts.

Of course, the Colts have lost to New England a lot lately, and lost, and lost some more, one 20-plus point humiliation after another. And even before that, Peyton Manning, your all-NCAA, all-NFL, all-everything QB, never lived up to the hype. He was supposed to be The Greatest of All Time. Don't even bother quoting me his regular-season stats--you didn't draft him for regular-season glory. He was supposed to sweep into town and bring you a mountain of hardware. He got you one ring before he left, yes, but other than that, he gagged like a virgin bride in the playoffs every year, no matter how invincible he looked during the regular season. His myriad apologists pretend that the lone Lombardi Trophy excuses all the choking. It doesn't. If Peyton Manning won a championship every time he was favored to, he would've been like TWO Joe Montanas.

Meanwhile, that 6th-round draft pick in New England and his crotchety coach took home title after title, and even when they didn't win it all, they were in the thick of things until the very end. No matter how much Peyton played against New England, he always seemed to be on the losing end. And oh, by the way, Brady also looks like a movie star, and he's married to an impossibly gorgeous Victoria's Secret supermodel. His life is utterly perfect. If you're not a fan, this stuff gets old. You're bitter. It hurts. I understand.

It's okay to be frustrated. It's okay to be passionate about your team. It's okay to be a journalist with an axe to grind. It's okay, though unhealthy, to let your passion for your team morph into hatred for your team's rivals, even the kind of unstable, tooth-clenching, vein-popping hatred that you and many others have directed towards Foxborough, Massachusetts. That level of hatred is scary, but it's not really a problem. What is a problem is when you let your bias affect your reporting.

I have a theory about you: The more wrong you know you are, the angrier you get. You come right out and say it's "ludicrous" that cold temperatures deflated those footballs, when you probably, no, definitely, know that footballs lose pressure in the cold. It's not a theory; it's a scientifically-proven fact. So no, Gregg, it's not "ludicrous" at all; it's a hell of a lot more plausible than your conspiracy theory that the Patriots deliberately deflated the balls by 2 PSI, or 1 PSI, or less than 1 PSI, or "a few ticks", or whatever the anonymous leak du jour is saying today. Because this story was built on anonymous leaks, wasn't it? Yeah, it was, and you know it was, and you're way too stubborn to admit it, so you keep repeating arguments that you know hold no water, and I bet it angers you that you have to stoop to that.

But no matter. You took realities, scientific realities that have been accepted by most everyone on both sides of this story, and dismissed them with a label. They are ludicrous, you said, though you don't ever tell us why that's so. What about the HeadSmart Labs study, which PROVED that temperature change and moisture could have caused the footballs to lose as much as 2 PSI? What about Bill Belichick's study, which proved that the Patriots pre-game football preparation process causes footballs to gain 1 PSI, which subsequently dissipates over the next couple of hours? This would cause an artificially high reading before the game, and a reduced reading at halftime. You have no counter-argument for these proven facts, so you simply ridicule them, apparently in the hopes that we'll move along without asking questions.

This brings up a good point. Exactly how much pressure did these balls lose, Gregg? What were the pre-game and halftime PSI readings on each of the Patriots footballs? EXACTLY what were they? I'm not asking for general ranges; I need the actual readings of all 12 footballs for both teams, before the game and at halftime. Since you're so ironclad in your conviction that rules were broken and that championships should be vacated, you must have some solid data, and you must also have proof that the lost pressure could not have been caused by anything else other than deliberate malfeasance. Please share it with us!

And no, friend, a football measuring below the NFL's specified pressure range does NOT constitute proof that it was tampered with. As discussed above, footballs lose pressure for all sorts of reasons. Sticking a needle into a football and letting air out is not the only way for it to lose pressure. Go out and do some reading. Educate yourself. The materials are there!

I find your "perception equals reality" argument amusing. As a member of the media, you should be ashamed at the way you and your sportswriting brethren hungrily swallowed the NFL's leaks on this story, printing each scurrilous lie and baseless rumor as infallible gospel, and jumping to conclusions about who knew what and what the punishments should be, even as the "facts" kept changing and it was clear we didn't know everything yet. You--many of you--let your personal hatred color your writing. You really, really wanted the Patriots to be guilty, you wanted to have something over them, you wanted to BEAT them, and you sure as hell couldn't do it on the football field, so, along with the rest of the media, you convicted the Patriots, you smeared and slandered them, you recklessly trumpeted unfounded rumors as front-page headlines, and when those rumors were inevitably contradicted, your corrections were parenthetical--if you bothered to correct yourself at all. You used your persuasive powers to convince us that the Patriots were guilty. You deliberately poisoned your readers' opinions on this issue, and then you hid behind those opinions, smugly proclaiming that the Patriots have "lost" in the court of public opinion, while failing to acknowledge your own role in that process.

Tell me Gregg, how do you justify immediately believing the story that the Patriots' footballs were all underinflated by 2 PSI, never once questioning the source or the story itself, when you now refuse to believe, and in fact angrily mock, the idea that the Colts could have tampered with a football themselves? If the Colts didn't tamper with it, how do you explain Ian Rappoport's story that the D'Qwell Jackson football was the only one in the game that was 2 PSI under, and that none of the others in the entire game were even close to that? And no, I don't care about Chuck Pagano giving some reporter the stinkeye. He didn't answer the question, and neither have you.  And oh yeah: "The Patriots cheated before" is not an explanation. If you want to use their prior history as justification to investigate them more thoroughly, then go ahead. If you want to punish them more severely when and if they're found guilty, so be it. But you can NOT assume guilt because of a prior offense. That idea itself is un-American. You still have to prove your case. So prove it, or shut up.

By the by, I'm not conceding that the public has condemned the Patriots. SI ran a cover story on the Pats called "On to Immortality", with nary an asterisk in site. Pro Football Talk, CBSSports, the New York Times, and many others published stories immediately following the Super Bowl asserting that the Patriots' dynasty was the greatest of all time, and that Tom Brady is the best QB ever to play the game--and they published those stories without fine print.

This non-scandal scandal is in everyone's rear-view mirror but yours. It only got out of control in the first place because of unethical, misleading, anonymous leaks by the NFL, and irresponsible journalism by opportunists like you who knew better.

One other thing: Your statement that "The Patriots' substitution patterns... forced the NFL to make an adjustment for the Super Bowl" is at best sloppy research on your part, and at worst and out-and-out lie. Bill Voinovich, the official in the Pats-Ravens game, did not properly signal when a New England player declared as ineligible. Voinovich was supposed to declare the player as ineligible, along with making a hand signal to that effect, but he neglected to make the hand signal. Dean Blandino pointed out his error and made sure the proper procedure would be followed in the Super Bowl. This was a referee error--NOT a procedure change necessitated by a team's substitution practices.

This Super Bowl win has crowned the Patriots' dynasty with historic greatness, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. Make your peace with that, and get on with your life.

Much Love-
The Sports Police

Peyton Manning: GOAT or goat?

Like any sport, football lends itself to spirited debates about its heroes, and when it comes to football heroes, no one inspires our emotions like quarterbacks.

Inevitably, we football fans think, and argue, about which QB is the Greatest Of All Time (GOAT). But no one even seems able to agree on the criteria for such a title, let alone which player deserves it. Even so, there are some parts of this debate that are, well, not up for debate.

Peyton Manning is deservedly always in the GOAT conversation--now more than ever, as one record after another tumbles into his grasp--but Manning has been dogged for years about his postseason performance. How could it be that a man who has thrown for more touchdowns than anyone else in NFL history, and who is a Brett Favre away from owning most of the other career passing records, with the nearest competitors nothing more than a speck in his rearview mirror, has so little postseason success?

"But what about Super Bowl 41?!" his many defenders shout. "Manning won the big game! He got the monkey off his back!"

But did he?

Year after year, Peyton has compiled eye-popping regular season performances, racking up so many passing yards that they should be measured in miles, throwing touchdowns by the dozen, and collecting double-digit win totals as if they were trading cards, prompting pigskin prognosticators across the land to assure us annually that no one would stop Peyton this year, that he would hoist aloft the Lombardi trophy at season's end for sure. Love him or hate him, you must admit that, if Manning won a Super Bowl every time he was supposed to, he'd be like two Joe Montanas. And yet, just the one.

"Still counts," you say. "He proved he could win the big one." Yes, but so have a lot of people who aren't in this conversation. Of course, Manning deserves the credit for winning a championship, but what about the rest of his postseason career? how does he stack up against the other great QBs in the playoffs?

With these questions in mind, I compiled regular season and postseason winning percentages for all 13 NFL QBs with 100 career wins or more. I chose the 100-win figure simply because, if we're looking for the GOAT, no one with fewer than that could expect to be taken seriously.

These percentages in hand, I simply subtracted the postseason number from the regular-season one and expressed the difference as a percentage:

One would naturally expect a QB's postseason win percentage to be lower than his regular-season percentage, due to the small sample size of playoff games, and the single-elimination format. But unexpectedly, three QBs, Terry Bradshaw, Johnny Unitas, and Fran Tarkenton, actually had a higher win percentage in the playoffs than they had in the regular season. Talk about clutch! Additionally, two QBs, Roethlisberger and Elway, had the same win percentage in the regular season as they did in the playoffs.

In Manning's case, my suspicions were confirmed: His postseason winning percentage was over 22% lower than his regular season percentage. This put him in 13th place--dead last--among the all-time elite QBs when it comes to postseason dropoff.

Note also that the bottom five QBs in our ranking--Favre, Kelly, Marino, Moon, and Manning, have a combined 718 regular season wins and just two Super Bowl titles, whereas the top eight have 995 wins and 17 Super Bowls, with another two (pre-Super Bowl) NFL championships for Unitas.

One other stat caught my eye: The number of One and Done seasons--seasons in which the QB lost his first playoff game--for each of the 13 QBs. Who do you think had the most?

Look, I know this is a tough pill to swallow for a lot of you. As I've said before, Peyton is a nice guy with a good sense of humor, and is easy to like. But his postseason futility is no longer up for debate. It's a statistical fact that his peers far outperform him.

Any questions?

Michael Silver from NFL.com is biased and incompetent, Part I: The Welker Situation

Every so often, in a Patriot-hating world, there emerges someone who manages to separate himself from the pack, someone who stoops so far below the rules of good taste, and, in this case, good journalism, that we can't help but take notice.

In his recent article, Michael Silver makes a convincing case for Hack of the Year, as he seeks flimsy justifications to convince readers of the scurrilous conjecture he peddles against a team that he clearly hates.

He has provided us with such a wealth of ammo that my responses will have to be broken out into multiple posts, hence the "Part I" in the title.

Silver spent a lot of time talking about Wes Welker. Let's address his assertions one at a time.


Erroneous Assertion #1: Not signing Wes Welker was a "poor football decision by Belichick"


We're all human, including Bill Belichick, but when a man has been in this sport for 50 years, and has won five Super Bowls as a coach or coordinator, as Belichick has, then he gets the benefit of the doubt. With all due respect, Michael, a guy who taps on a keyboard for a living ought to check the facts before he questions someone with Belichick's resume.

Let's start with your conclusion, that failing to re-sign Wes Welker was a "poor football move".

Tell me, Michael: What was the right "football move"? What were the Patriots supposed to do? Offer Welker more money? More years? Whatever he wanted? What?

Take a look at the Patriots' last offer to Welker:


-Two years, $10 million
-$8 million guaranteed
-$6 million available in incentives
-Maximum contract value: $16 million


Now, the offer Welker signed with the Broncos:


-Two years, $12 million
-$6 million guaranteed
-$300,000 available in incentives
-Maximum contract value: $12,300,000


Welker didn't get rich joining the Broncos, or at least not much richer than he would have gotten in New England. In fact, he actually would have had MORE guaranteed money in New England, and the Pats' offer had a much higher max value than Denver's. Apparently the extra $2 million in base salary was really, really super important to Wes, important enough that he didn't care about the $6 million in incentives, important enough that he'd leave the team--and the fan base, and the QB--that had become like family to him. Yeah, it's business-but that cuts both ways.

You piss on the Patriots because they didn't give Welker more money. But you fail to see--or admit--that the Pats' offer was competitive. They offered Welker more guaranteed money and a higher maximum value than Denver did, but Welker refused the offer, over $2 million in base, which he would have earned anyway had he performed as he had the previous two years. The offer was more than adequate, as proved by the very similar offer that Welker actually accepted. Only one other team in the NFL--Tennessee--even expressed interest in Welker. If the Patriots' offer was so terrible, then why didn't other teams beat it? Why didn't the Jets or Cardinals pony up with a four-year, $40 million offer? Simple. Because Welker wasn't worth it.

Disagree?

Let's look at Welker's actual performance from 2013. You're familiar with performance, right? The stuff players actually get paid for?

Wes Welker - 2013 stats 
13 games / 73 rec /  778 yds / 10 TD 

Not bad, but a significant drop from 2012, when Welker broke 100 catches and 1000 yards, and nowhere near the top of the league, as he had been with New England. Still think that $8 million in guaranteed money was an insult?

Herrrrrrre come the excuses.

"But...but... Manning's got more weapons," you might say. "Welker is sharing the receptions with more people in Denver. And Welker missed three games due to injury."

Answer the question. Look at Welker's line from 2013 again. Are those numbers, or are they not, worthy of a $12 million contract? Didn't think so.

And I'm glad you bring up injury (I know you didn't actually bring it up. Work with me). Welker has been absorbing monster shots across the middle for years in New England. Matt Hasselback estimated recently that Welker may have had as many as 10 concussions before the new protocols were put into place. Welker's had three concussions over the past 10 months alone.

Let go of your bias and be honest with yourself. Wes Welker was a great player, but he is 33 years old now, and his best years are behind him. Now that he's started down the concussion path, they'll come easier and easier, and Peyton is apparently not too concerned with trying to protect him. Messing around with head injuries is a dangerous game, and I hope for his health's sake that Welker doesn't play too much longer.

I get that you don't like him, but I ain't buying this whole "Belichick made a mistake" narrative that you're trying to sell. Belichick knew how old Welker was. He knew what Welker's body had been through. He, along with Robert Kraft, decided that two years was the maximum that the Patriots should offer. If that were a mistake, other teams would have offered significantly more years and more money. None did. You're wrong.

"But...but...," you protest. "The Pats essentially chose Danny Amendola over Welker"

Why is it that, when I read the above, I hear a whiny nine-year-old's voice, complaining about how another nine-year-old just wiped boogers on him?

Maybe you're a sappy, 85-year-old lady at heart who should be watching the Hallmark Channel instead of the NFL. Or maybe you just don't know football. Why do you seem so incredibly butthurt at what you perceive to be a slight against Wes Welker? Football is a business. The cruel and painful truth is that, oftentimes, a team can replace an older player with a younger one for less money, and when they can, they are stupid not to. Is this concept foreign to you?

Now, it is true that Amendola's 2013 numbers were not what the Patriots hoped they'd be (54 rec / 633 yds / 2 TD), but Amendola only played in 12 games, and only started six of them. And, as it turns out, Brady developed significant chemistry with Julian Edelman in 2013, who, after only catching 21 passes in all of 2012, performed incredibly in 2013:

Julian Edelman - 2013 stats
105 rec / 1056 yds /  6 TD

What do you know? Those numbers are positively Welker-like! In otherwords, the Patriots replaced Welker's production with someone five years younger. And cheaper. And less concussion-prone. The Patriots found a way.

So - again - Michael, please provide evidence to prove your assertion that not signing Welker was a poor football decision, when the Patriots replaced Welker's production for less money. In fact, they exceeded it. Explain, or admit that you are biased.


Erroneous assertion #2: "Welker's presence in Denver has to be especially galling to Brady"


It "has to be"? In otherwords, you can't prove it. Brady didn't say that this "galled" him. No one close to Brady said it. In short, you have exactly zero proof.

You only have the Patriots' 2013 results: They won the AFC East - again - and reached the AFC championship game, despite losing their top defensive lineman, linebacker, and cornerback. Do you think Tom Brady stormed into Belichick's office after losing to Denver, screaming that Wes Welker would have won that game for the Pats? I don't.

Despite heroic efforts by you and most other NFL journalists, you have failed to prove that there is any discord in the New England locker room. But you really, really want us to believe it anyway, because it would make you happy if there was turmoil in Patriot Nation.

Keep dreaming.