Wes Welker: Do Comments About Bill Belichick Forecast Demise of Patriots?

Denver Broncos wide receiver Wes Welker recently let the cat out of the bag by having a dig at his former coach with the New England Patriots, Bill Belichick. When asked why Welker left the Pats, Welker claimed that Belichick "chided" him in front of teammates.

Welker's comments indicate a larger problem - Belichick's abrasive ways wore thin on him, and will eventually wear thin on the current Patriot roster. And it will eventually lead to fractures that will tear the fabric that made the Patriots so great this past decade.

For as long as I have followed football, the Patriots have been the San Antonio Spurs of the NFL. They have unstoppable coach-superstar combination, and you always got the sense that they could stick a homeless guy in their system and he could succeed. The Spurs don't have a fancy mantra, but Belichick's squads all lived under the "Patriot Way."

Like the Spurs, the Patriots' undying philosophies are how to handle draft picks, deal with the media and not capitulate to players' contract demands, no matter how valuable they seemed at the time.

All-Pro players, like Welker, in Belichick's system could be replaced just as easily as an injured kicker in your fantasy league.

How could Welker not have been worth the money Denver paid for him to New England? He had at least 100 receptions in three of his four seasons with Tom Brady! He was his go-to guy on seemingly every third down. He was the best slot receiver in the league, bar none.

And yet you're not so special, Wes. Belichick has no trouble parting ways with the second-best receiver in league history, a guy who caught 23 touchdowns and was the best deep-threat of all time (Randy Moss), his 2006 Super Bowl hero (Deion Branch), one of the more dominant defensive tackles in the league (Richard Seymour), the heart and soul of his secondary and defense in 2001 (Lawyer Milloy) and perhaps the best clutch player in league history who won you three rings (Adam Vinatieri).

Welker, known for being the guy who didn't take a lot of discretion in making fun of Rex Ryan's foot fetish before their playoff game against the Jets in 2010, didn't hold back in portraying Belichick as anything less than a heartless, censoring tyrant.

"When I'm answering questions from the Denver media, I'm not worried what Broncos' people are going to think," Welker told SI. "I'm worried about what Belichick will think. Isn't that crazy?"

It makes you wonder what the Patriot Way really is, what kind of ship they run in New England. Perhaps the "ship" shouldn't be modified with an adjective, but instead a prefix—"dictator."

Welker's comments aren't explicit, obviously. But any fan with an ounce of inferential ability in their body would realize that Welker is saying that Belichick hasn't got it anymore.

Belichick no longer knows how to handle stars or value his assets properly. He can no longer handle the media as gracefully as he has in the past. And he may or may not have begun to lose his locker room through his callousness.

I've always thought that football was a "locker room" game. You have 53 men, multiple coaches—but more importantly, there's a lot of division among a football organization, and that's hard to manage. There's offense and defense. There are positions and their individual coaches.

Combined with the high turnover rate, those factors indicate that the strength and bond of the NFL locker room is quite delicate.

When negative publicity hits your team, you are tearing at those bonds. It's those same bonds that cause linebackers to miscommunicate on how to play a specific run or the nickel and the safety criss-crossing and letting a receiver go for a big play.

Belichick knows this—and that's why he avoided giving proprietary information about his team to the media.

And now it's possible that Belichick is in over his head. Personnel-wise, he made no effort to re-sign his best receiver in Welker and cut his only semblance of a deep-threat in Brandon Lloyd even though it was clear Rob Gronkowski was no sure thing to be healthy for 2013.

He then replaced them with rookies (Aaron Dobson) and washed-up veterans (Michael Jenkins, Jake Ballard). Actually it might be hard to say either Jenkins or Ballard are washed-up, considering neither of them were any good in the first place.

Maybe his answer was to focus more of the offense on Aaron Hernandez. But in the wake of his murder charges, I find it hard to believe that Belichick had absolutely no knowledge or foresight to predict or prevent something like this from happening.

And if he didn't, this offers massive proof of his naivete.

We haven't even mentioned the bizarre Tim Tebow signing. For somebody who acted like he was so allergic to the media, he brought in the ultimate media circus with that guy. And it somehow ended not even being the most compelling storyline in the Patriots' camp.

Everyone "put up" with Belichick's onerous principles when they were cranking out Super Bowls, Super Bowl appearances and double-digit win seasons. How will everyone around the organization react if the Pats let all the personnel problems and the dark media cloud get to them and they finish 9-7? Worse, what if they don't even win the division?

"But he does it to everyone, it's the way he is."

Something tells me no matter the outcome of this season, Welker's implication that Belichick would never stop being Belichick is completely accurate.

And Welker won't be the last valuable Pats star who cuts the cord with the "Patriot Way" because he was sick of putting up with Bill Belichick.