So, Bill Belichick is upset at Wes Welker.
The hit, as anyone with functioning eyeballs can clearly see, wasn’t illegal. It wasn’t dirty, and it wasn’t something defensive backs playing the Broncos all year haven’t seen dozens of times.
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You know what Bill’s problem is? Wes Welker left him, and the team, found someone better and is moving on (to the Super Bowl) while Bill and Tom are sitting at home, on the couch, eating Chunky Monkey and crying while watching Rudy on VHS.
It’s a bad, public breakup, folks, and anyone who says otherwise isn’t paying attention.
First thing’s first: Wes Welker is generously listed as 5’8” tall and 185 pounds. That is (give or take a few pounds) exactly how big I am. Am I a professional athlete? Heck no, but I’m also not a dump truck. Aqib Talib, on the other hand, is a much more menacing 6’1” tall and somewhere between 200 and 215 pounds. Plus, you know, he’s a defensive back, and his job is to hit people.
Welker’s job is to run fast and catch footballs, and more recently look awesome while his legs are being eaten by alligators. A stalwart tackler he is not.
Secondly, Welker is the one who bounces off Talib during the play. Talib isn’t rocked off his feet like Vernon Davis was when Cam Chancellor decided to (again, legally) rearrange his vertebrae like a Jenga puzzle. Welker falls to the turf just like Talib did. Plus, Talib flinches when he sees Welker coming, so I would hesitate to even call it a hit on a “defenseless player,” something bandied about by the talking heads all day today.
Belichick is simply upset that A) Welker told him to take his paltry contract offer and shove it, and B) the Patriots had one competent DB to cover a half-dozen talented pass catchers and he had the bad luck to take a solid hit during a playoff football game and injure himself. It happens, Bill. Don’t be angry. Grow from the experience and move on, because I can guarantee Wes isn’t looking fondly at the frozen hills of Massachusetts right now, longing for the days where he labored under your iron grip. He’s practicing for the biggest game of his life, playing with the Greatest Quarterback in History, and he couldn’t care less about what you think of his playing style.
