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Bill Belichick Won’t Rule Out Wes Welker Playing in the Preseason

One of the biggest questions surrounding the Patriots this offseason is the health and the status of wide receiver Wes Welker. Not only has Welker emerged as one of Tom Brady’s favorite targets, but he has emerged and one of the best receivers in the league. Despite being smaller for a wide receiver and having bounced around early in his career, Welker has found his home in New England and has become nearly impossible to cover coming out of the slot.

Despite missing the final two games of the regular season a year ago with a devastating knee injury, Welker had a career high in catches with 123. It remains uncertain whether or not he will be able to play at all this preseason, but if the Patriots want to make a return to the playoffs and hold off the Jets again in the AFC East, they will need their speedy slot receiver to come back healthy and return to the form he showed before his knee injury.

Bill Belichick joined WEEI in Boston with the Big Show to talk about the decision to play against another team during training camp as opposed to playing against teammates, on why he chose to practice against the Falcons, what the status is of Wes Welker and Logan Mankins, and whether or not he is concerned with the youth of the defense.

On playing another team during training camp because constantly playing teammates can get boring:

“I just think it worked out, the way the schedule worked and the teams and the situation. It just worked out where we felt like it was a good thing to do. There are a lot of factors that go into it, definitely one of which is being on a Thursday game schedule all the way through the preseason. Those things are really hard to do, when you’re playing Thursday night one week and Monday night the next and stuff like that. The schedule worked out, the teams worked out and I just thought it would be a good experience. Mike Smith with Atlanta and Sean Payton with New Orleans and I thought [about it] in the past and the schedule hit this year, so it worked out.”

On why he chose to do this kind of practice with this team this year:

“Again, I think it was more of the way it fell. I think it went well last week with New Orleans so we’re hoping for another good week this week against Atlanta.”

On playing Wes Welker in the preseason:

“We’ll see how that goes. I wouldn’t rule it out, but I wouldn’t say it’s a definite either. We’ll just take it day by day, just like with everybody else.”

On how the two rookie tight ends are adjusting to the system:

“Well, they know a lot more now than they did a couple of weeks ago. They still got a long way to go. One good thing about our tight ends is that they’ve been out there every day. They’ve been healthy, they’ve worked hard, and they’ve competed to work better. Aaron [Hernandez] and Rob Gronkowski, Rob Myers, those guys made some mistakes, like we all do, but they’ve learned and it seems like they’re doing things better the second or third times around. A lot of times, it’s a case where they haven’t seen it and they’re not exactly sure what to do, but as they see it and understand it, then it happens smoother the next time.

It’s a difficult position to play because the tight ends are involved in every single play, running paths and they have to block and pass protect, run routes and be part of the passing game on all three downs and goal line and short yardage and all of those kind of situations as well as all the blocking plays, both run and pass. There’s no play off for a tight end. He’s right in the middle of the action on everything, so there’s a lot to learn at that position, [especially] in our offense.”

On Logan Mankins:

“I’m just working on the guys here, who are getting on the plane going to play at Atlanta.”

On the possible need to have his young defensive players turn into leaders quickly:

“I think all of that takes care of itself on your team and it’s not something that you can really orchestrate as a coach. When you put people together, there’s a natural evolution of chemistry and whatever you want to call it, leadership or interaction, camaraderie within a group and I think all of that just happens because of the people and also the circumstances that surround those people. Certainly when you put that team under stress, like training camp and two-a-day practices and grind through it, it forces everybody to meet a stiff individual challenge and then as they handle it as individual challenges, some people have more of an ability to work with the guys in those situations than others do and those people start to emerge.

So again, that’s not something that I think as a coach, you can say, ‘Well this guy is going to do this and this guy is going to do this and that guy is going to do that.’ It has to happen [on its own] and the person has to do it on his own and he has to earn everybody else’s respect. You can’t make people feel a certain way about a person and they have to earn that themselves. Whoever the best players are, those are the guys who are going to play the most and the guys that don’t play as well will play less, whoever that is. It’s young players, old players, veterans, rookies, draft choices, and free agents. It doesn’t make any difference, it’s just about competition out there on the field and we’ll let it play itself out.”

Listen to Bill Belichick on WEEI in Boston here

Tags: AFC East, Bill Belichick, New England Patriots, NFL, WEEI, Wes Welker