Lay Off Welker, New England!

Lay Off Welker, New England!

Lay off New England! Lay off Gisele! Patriots’ wide receiver Wes Welker does NOT deserve the goat’s treatment.

In the aftermath of Super Bowl XLVI, Pats fans are looking for a scapegoat. And, unfortunately for Wes Welker, he is the one.

You obviously know that Welker made a critical mistake which may have very well cost the Patriots their 4th Super Bowl title.

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With 4:06 to play in the 4th quarter, New England had the ball at the Giants 44-yard line facing second-and-11. As Welker and Tom Brady both acknowledged, the Giants seemed to get mixed up on their coverage allowing for Welker to get free at the Giants 20.

Brady threw the pass which Welker turned around to make a leaping catch on, but could not. The ball hit Welker right in the hands and then dropped to the turf. So too did Welker with hands over head realizing what a golden opportunity he had let slip through his usually reliable hands.

Had Welker caught that ball, the Patriots could have, at the very least, taken the clock to under 2 minutes to play because the Giants had only one timeout remaining.

With one more first down on top of that, they could have run out the clock and won the game 17-15. They also could have scored a touchdown making it 24-15 essentially icing the game. Or, they could have kicked a field goal to go up 5 forcing Eli Manning and the Giants to march down the field and score a touchdown with no timeouts remaining and less than 2 minutes to operate.

But that’s not what happened. After an incomplete pass to Deion Branch on third down, New England punted to New York giving Manning and the Giants the ball at their own 12-yard line with 3:46 to play.

But, why must Welker shoulder all of the blame for this loss?

Didn’t the Patriots defense have a chance to make a play in the final 3:46 that would have sealed the win for the team? How about Tom Brady’s interception? If he hadn’t underthrown that ball to Rob Gronkowski, wouldn’t that have been 7 more points for the team? What about Brady’s safety on the team’s first offensive play of the game? Or the 12-men on the field penalty in the first which nullified a Patriots’ fumble recovery and allowed the Giants to score their first touchdown? How about Rob Ninkovich going off-sides on third down which would have forced a Giants punt from their own 11 early in the 4th quarter and turned the field position in favor of his team?

The bottom line is that football is a team game and you win as a team and you lose as a team. There is rarely one single play that defines a game or determines its outcome and that is true of Super Bowl XLVI.

No matter how much the talking heads on sports radio want us to believe that it was Welker’s drop that lost the game, it wasn’t. It was one of many things that contributed to the loss.

According to ESPN.com, Tom Brady’s supermodel wife threw all of the Patriots receivers under the bus after the game. As the story goes, Gisele Bundchen was being heckled by some Giants fans while waiting for the elevator after the game at Lucas Oil Stadium. Her response to them was, “my husband can’t f------ throw the ball and catch the ball at the same time! I can’t believe they dropped the ball so many times!”

Great! I’m sure that’s exactly what Tom Brady wanted to read on Monday. I’m assuming that Welker and his girlfriend won’t be going on any double dates with Tom and G (aka “The Perfect Ones”) anytime soon.

Bundchen should think twice before crushing her hubby’s teammates. Doesn’t she realize that most of New England thinks that she may, in fact, be responsible for the Patriots two Super Bowl losses to the Giants more than Wes Welker or anyone else?

For the record, Brady is (3-0) in the Super Bowl when dating women whose names are not Gisele Bundchen and (0-2) since shacking up with her highness.

But back to the rest of us. Wes Welker does not deserve out scorn.

A facebook friend of mine called his drop “Buckneresque.” I beg to differ.

While Welker makes that catch 8 out of 10 times, it was, by no means, an easy catch which is more than we can say for the routine grounder botched by Billy boy.

Secondly, Welker faced up to his drop like a man following the game accepting full responsibility for not making the catch. That may not score points with you, but it does with me.

Why isn’t the defense receiving such venom? For the third time in the last 3 games against the New York Giants, the Patriots have held the lead until the final minute of the game only to have the defense allow Eli & Company score a go-ahead touchdown. Is that somehow okay with you?

Or how about the coaching staff? After two great drives which both resulted in scores at the end of the first half and the beginning of the second half, they all of a sudden decided to abandon the hurry-up offense which got them those two scores in the first place. Why?

Rip on Wes all you want, but there’s no other player outside of maybe Tom Brady that I would rather have on this team than him. He is the epitome of consistency, greatness and class.

I’ll take 53 Wes Welker’s on my team.