Wes Welker OK With New England Patriots Franchise Tag

Wes Welker says he’s OK with receiving a franchise tag from the New England Patriots, a tag that will keep him on the team for $9.5 million next season. In speaking with NFL Network’s NFL Total Access on Thursday Welker revealed:

“I mean, it’s a lot of money. How can you ever be upset about that?” while he added “It’s not a bad deal, so I’m not too worried about it.”

While Wes Welker says he’s fine with the franchise tag and possibly a slight dip in pay he didn’t hedge his bets completely, when asked if he would attend workouts with the New England Patriot’s next week he said:

“Still looking to try and decide on that, I’m in no rush.”

Welker had some impressive numbers during the 2011-2012 season, leading the AFC with 1,569 receiving yards. Unfortunately Welker’s season will probably forever be defined by the fourth-quarter Super Bowl pass he failed to pull down from QB Tom Brady, a missed opportunity that quite possibly lost his team Super Bowl XLVI.

Speaking about his missed opportunity Wes Welker notes:

“Every day that goes by, you think about it less and less. But there’s definitely a two-, three-week time period there where it was pretty rough, and you thought about it quite often. But you just gotta move on and accept everything that happened, and learn from it and be a better player from it.”

During his interview Welker also opened up about happenings Welk joked about outgoing TE Rob Gronkowski:

“I don’t think Gronk really changes for anything. You know, I think he’ll always continue to work out just so his abs will look sweet for the chicks and everything else. … He’s a character. We love him.”

Wes goes on to note that Chad Ochocinco is struggling to learn the teams more complex playbook, admitting that any player coming into the organization is met with a pretty big learning curve.

Welker also praised Tim Tebow but I’m over the undeserved praise that is Tebowmania so we’ll leave it at that.