Insane Wes Welker Praise Must Stop

Patriots wide receiver Wes Welker is a good, solid football player. This season he was a starting wide receiver on one of the best offenses in NFL history, and he had a very good game in a losing effort in the Super Bowl. He's also a special teams contributor. I like Welker. Please don't interpret anything I'm about to write as criticism of Welker.

Now then: Wes Welker isn't even anywhere close to being as good as some members of the NFL media think he is, and it's absolutely ridiculous the level of praise he's getting. Among the media members who had a vote for Super Bowl MVP, Welker came in second to the winner, Giants quarterback Eli Manning.

Think about that for a second. The media panel assembled to choose the game's MVP thought Welker had a better game than Giants defensive lineman Justin Tuck, who had two sacks and a forced fumble. Or Tuck's linemate Michael Strahan, who terrorized Tom Brady all day. Or Giants wide receiver Amani Toomer, who caught every pass thrown to him. Or any other player on the team that won the game.

And the media love for Welker gets even worse.
I like and respect Peter King of Sports Illustrated, but in his column after the Super Bowl, he offered an absolutely ludicrous comparison of Welker to Jerry Rice, pointing out that Welker caught more passes (counting the playoffs) in 2007-08 than Rice did in 1995-96. I'll let Pacifist Viking explain why this is absurd:

He doesn't point out that in 1995, Rice set the NFL RECORD FOR RECEIVING YARDS IN A SEASON with 1,848. In 2007 Welker had 1,175 receiving yards in the regular season, a total Rice topped ELEVEN TIMES! And in '95 Jerry Rice had 15 touchdown receptions in the regular season to Wes Welker's 8--a total Rice topped TWELVE TIMES!

If King wants to show how great Wes Welker is by comparing his best receptions total in a season (in 19 regular and post-season games) to Jerry Rice's best receptions total in a season (in 17 regular and post-season games), he can do so. He is, however, fairly idiotic to simply present only receptions without pointing out that in 1995 Rice had MORE RECEIVING YARDS THAN ANYBODY EVER HAD IN A SINGLE SEASON!, while Welker's 1,175 yards was topped by BY TEN RECEIVERS THIS SEASON! I'm completely appalled by this statistical cherry picking.

Look, people: Wes Welker is a good football player. But he's not even close to being the best wide receiver on his own team, and to suggest that he stacks up in any way to the best wide receiver of all time is dumb.