Unreal 6m a year for Wes

Freaking awesome signing - especially with that contract!

Are you suggesting they overpaid?

how is an Alex Smith led team going to score enough points against this type of offense?

No that's a great deal

Now for the interesting part of free agency, how we get our Cornerback, and how this deal between the Broncos and Welker affects us.

I'm not going to beat the newly dead horse of "OMG Welker and Manning is going to kills us omg". We've talked about that already, we'll deal with it. What this deal does, though, affects our targets, and once again the Patriots have the ball to deal with, and here's why.

If the Patriots don't sign Danny Amendola, the front runner to replace Wes Welker in the slot, then that means they will sign Julian Edelman. If they sign Edelman instead of Amendola, they can afford to keep Aqib Talib, someone we are targeting for CB2. If they do that, Amendola goes back to St. Louis and signs a contract.

This now takes away 3 Receivers for us to sign, and takes away one of the Corners we were looking at.

Most likely we'll end up with Sean Smith, our #1 target, or DRC/Nnamdi.

If we don't sign Smith, who a number of teams are after, we will have more foreseeable cap room open to sign another wide receiver, since we seem to be ignoring the RT issue. Thus allowing the Greg Jennings rumors that I heard an hour ago, to actually turn into something tangible. And I don't like Greg Jennings.

Hopefully instead of Greg Jennings, the Chiefs end up being one of the 5-6 teams that contacted Karlos Dansby immediately after his release, and we end up signing a DRC/Namdi deal, as well as shoring up our linebacker position.

All eyes at this point are on the Patriots and Danny Amendola. If they don't sign him, we will likely lose Talib, and MUST pursue Sean Smith or face much weaker alternatives.

What? Is Welker not very fond of money? How did that happen?

Now if that's true, that freaking sucks. I can't understand the Pats not giving him 3 years at 6, or 2 years at 6.5. That's just stupid...

Agreed, he must have had a VERY short list of teams he would consider... and he must really not be happy with Broncos' management.

Donnie Avery gets 11 million over 3 years and Welker gets 2 for 12. I hate the Avery signing.

If it's only a two-year deal it must be a lot of guaranteed money.

Wes isn't that old, but he's got a lot of wear on the tires. I appreciate what he did here, but I think Belichick was tired of watching Welker drop passes when it counted the most. Welker's going to get along great with Manning; they both produce ridonkulous stats but come up short (no height joke intended) at the worst times.

As Amnorix pointed out, the Pats have other options for the short game. If (and that's a big "if") they can finally get both Gronk and AHern to stay healthy then that part of the game is still pretty viable. They need more of an outside threat to stretch the field and provide big-play ability and keep the defenses from loading up close to the line.

The Pats won three Super Bowls. None of them with Welker or Randy Moss. They won them with clutch defensive players like Ty Law and Rodney Harrison (pre-Giants facemask bounce). Offense sells tickets, defense wins games. I already had the pleasure (and pain) of watching the 2007 record-setting offense go 18-1. The Broncos will suffer the same fate if they worry too much about putting toys around an aging Peyton and not enough about getting the defense top-notch.

Seriously.....2 years and $12 million? ****.

TBG what is your guy saying about Sean Smith?

Peyton Manning discount

I'm guessing nearly all of it is guaranteed.