First, let us start with praise for the 2006 Patriots.
No, really.
Remember them? Easy to forget, I guess. Three years can be a long time. Lots can happen in the interim. In 2006, we had never heard of Spygate. Gisele was just another supermodel. Charlie Weis had just taken Notre Dame to its second straight BCS Bowl. The Celtics were about to start a 24-win season that was essentially an eight-month tank job with the (crossing fingers) hope of landing Greg Oden.
To quote Robert Zimmerman, things have changed.
But back to the 2006 Pats. Thirty years from now, they'll be totally forgotten. But this was a really good football team. A 12-4 record. AFC East champions. Seventh in the league in scoring and second in points allowed. Went on the road and beat a 14-2 Chargers team in the playoffs. OK, the AFC title loss at Indianapolis was an all-time killer, but clearly this was a team you leave alone, right? Just roll the same guys out next year and take your chances.
Well, there was the matter of Reche Caldwell ...
Look, there are upgrades and then there are UPGRADES. Cris Collinsworth is an upgrade over John Madden. Jon Gruden is an UPGRADE over Tony Kornheiser. Going from Jennifer Aniston to Angelina Jolie was an upgrade. But Mimi Rodgers to Nicole Kidman (please remember we are talking about the 1989 Kidman, not the current version -- she has Botoxed herself out of the rotation) was an UPGRADE.
Think Randy Moss and Wes Welker over Caldwell and a 35-year-old Troy Brown deserve capital letters?
And it wasn't just Caldwell and Brown, either. The 2006 Patriots might have had the worst corps of receivers in the league. Doug Gabriel? Bam Childress? Chad Jackson? Something had to be done.
So Bill Belichick turned a second-, fourth- and seventh-round pick in the 2007 draft into Welker and Moss. And in one weekend, the Patriots went from having one of the five worst 1-2 receiving combos in the NFL to having one of the five best in history. And if Tom Brady hadn't missed the 2008 season, I think you'd be looking at these two as the very best of all time, at least in terms of "peak value” (which I would define, in football terms, as three seasons or less.)
Before now, there has never been a time in NFL history when the league's best possession receiver AND top deep threat played on the same team. Since the beginning of the 2007 season, Welker leads all NFL players in catches with 302, 35 more than any other player (Larry Fitzgerald). And guess who leads the league in TD grabs over the past 2-1/2 seasons? Moss, with 42 (Fitzgerald is also second on this list, with 32). Receiving yards? Moss is third and Welker is sixth.
Not too shabby, eh? But the numbers, I think, are even more impressive when you take out the season Matt Cassel was under center. Tom Brady has played in 26 regular-season games (not counting Bernard Pollard) during the Welker/Moss era.
The Patriots are 23-3 in those games (and undefeated at home.) Brady, who never threw for more than 28 touchdowns in a season before 2007, has thrown for 70 touchdowns in the 26 games. Welker has played in 24 of those games (the Pats are 22-2) and has 191 catches and 12 TDs.
Just to give you an idea of how many catches that is, consider this:
-- Deion Branch, probably the receiver most would have considered the best Brady ever had prior to 2007, played in 43 games with the Patriots. He had 213 catches. That is 22 more catches in 19 extra games.
-- Welker led the league in catches in 2007 and leads the league in 2009 (despite having missed two games.) He’s on pace for 126 catches and will have the top three seasonal reception totals in franchise history at the end of the season.
-- If the season ended today he’d be a lock for first-team All-Pro (he’s been on the AP second team in each of the past two seasons.)
-- Welker is already seventh in Patriots history with his 302 catches. There are 43
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