A Thought for the Bye Week: Is This Talk About the Patriots "Lack of Weapons" Finally Dead?

Five weeks ago, when the Patriots were 2-2, their offense was struggling, the Seventh Seal was being broken, the sun was turning black as ashcloth and dogs & cats were shopping for apartments together, you couldn’t even hear yourself panic over the din of the usual window-licking anti-Patriots morons screaming “Tom Brady doesn’t have any WEAPONS!!!”  Remember those days?  When for the 15th year in a row we all ignored history, common sense, and reality (as opposed to Fantasy) and convinced ourselves that way to win a championship was to expend all sorts of draft capital and cap space on “elite” receivers?  And that by going into 2014 with their current roster, the Patriots were taking Brady’s rapidly-closing window and, Choose Your Metaphor: A) Pushing him out of it B) Slamming it down on his dick.

Obviously not everyone was blaming the receivers.  One long time, especially good-looking Pats observer wrote this back in September: “I still have a hard time thinking no one beside Edelman and Gronk is capable of getting open. Are Amendola, LaFell, Wright – guys who’ve all had seasons of 50 or so catches in terrible systems – really unable to free themselves from coverage?”  But that’s beside the point.  As we sit here after the 3rd best five week stretch of Brady’s career (Nos. 1 & 2 having come in MVPs years in 2007 & 2010), the much more important point is that this proves what I’ve been saying for years: Wide Receiver is the most overrated, over valued position in football, if not all of sports.

Nothing makes people swallow their tongues like saying that.  Everybody loves receivers.  Nothing makes a fanbase swoon like a GM pulling the trigger on a high 1st rounder or spending dump trucks filled with money on one and telling the great unwashed how he’ll “stretch the field” and “play outside the numbers” or whatever the Cliche du Jour is.  I’ve said before: Wide Receivers are to football what hot tubs are to the Home Show.  90% of the convention space at the Home Show is taken up with backyard spas.  Because you see one and you picture yourself sitting out there, a Rum & Coke in one hand, your neighbor’s boob in the other.  No one goes to the show looking for a new sump pump.  The lure of getting the water out of your basement can’t compete with the notion of hosting nightly neighborhood orgies.

Patriots fans fall into this trap all the time. In spite of the fact that this team won 3 Super Bowls with Pattens and Givenses, and lost them with Glenns and Mosses.  Still, just last week I heard Felger and Mazz screaming that the Patriots blew it when they chose to pass on a raging mental case like Dez Bryant (4 fewer catches than Edelman) in favor of Devin McCourty (one of the top safeties in football).  Taken to the illogical extreme, that argument would suggest the Pats would be much better off if they’d just wise up and started building their team the way Jerry Jones does.

But riddle me this: What great, high-priced, top-of-the-draft “elite” receiver ever led his team to a championship?  How far back do we have to go to find just one example of a team “loading up” on “weapons” and winning themselves a Super Bowl?

2013 Seattle – The Seahawks leading receivers were Golden Tate with 64 catches for 898 yards and Doug Baldwin with 50 for 778.  Those are fricking Brandon Lloyd numbers, and they led the league box-to-wire.  And don’t Percy Harvin me. After contributing nothing all year, he finally made plays in the Super Bowl but if he’d been struck by lightning on his way to the stadium, they still would’ve won by 4 TDs.  The fact he has a ring just proves the point I’m making.

2012 Baltimore – Their leader was Anquan Boldin, a slot receiver with 65 catches that they dumped off to San Fran for some pizza coupons.  Their second was Torrey Smith, who on 110 targets had a whopping 49 receptions.

2011 NY Giants – I’ll concede that Victor Cruz had a phenomenal year.  82 catches, 1,500+ yards.  He was the very definition of an “elite” wideout carrying his team to a title.  And was undrafted.  Out of that legendary NFL-feeder program, UMass.  Again, making my point for me.

2010 Green Bay – I’ll also give you Greg Jennings and his 1,200 yards.  Except he was taken with the 20th pick of the 2nd round in 2006 and has only stayed healthy three times in six seasons.

2009 New Orleans – Marques Colston, 1074 yards.  Maybe he counts.  Oh, right. A 7th rounder in 2006.  Scratch him.

…I could go through every year, but I’ll cut to the chase.  To find the last truly elite, 1st round bluechip wideout to make an big impact on a championship team, you’d have to go back to Plaxico Burress in 2007 and Reggie Wayne in ’06.  They’re the only two productive, 1st rounder No. 1 receiver to win rings since Michael Irvin 20 years ago.  Think of all the sexy Fantasy Football stud wide receivers that we’ve all lusted over during that time.  Larry Fitzgerald.  Megatron.  Demaryius Thomas.  Josh Gordon.  Andre Johnson.  AJ Green.  And not one of them has a ring while Troy Brown (198th overall) has 3.  Think of the price Atlanta paid (against Bill Belichick’s advice to Thomas Dimitroff) to move up in the draft to get Julio Jones.  Now consider that they’re 6-18 in the last season and a half.  And tell me again how the Pats will never put Lombardi IV in the trophy case unless they land one of them.

Keep panicking about “weapons” all you want.  Lapse into hysteria about the need to find a guy who’ll “take the top off the defense” while the Patriots build around guys who’ll pull the defense’s top down and motorboat it.  This Pats team that supposedly short changed the quarterback by giving him no one to throw to is 2nd in the league in Points Per Game (yes, more than Denver), after finishing 3rd last year.  Because it’s not the weapons that matter.  It’s the guy pulling the trigger.  @JerryThornton1