Bedard: With trade for Josh Gordon, Patriots have reached bottom at WR after years of neglect

After spending nine years in the football safe spaces at Baylor and then with the Cleveland Browns, Josh Gordon is in for a rude awakening after his trade Monday to the New England Patriots.

In June of 2013, I spent three days during mandatory mini-camp with the Browns for an MMQB story on the Browns' latest reboot (I've lost track which number we're on in 2018) with Joe Banner and Mike Lombardi. It was the first time I got a chance to watch Gordon operate up close.

It didn't take very long to recognize two things that will likely impact how effective and long his tenure will be in Foxborough:

1. The guy is uber-talented. Anyone who has ever watched football could tell you that. He's 6-foot-4, 225 pounds with long arms, big hands and can run and jump like few others his size. Gordon is a breathtaking talent and athlete.

2. He has a lot of dog in him — and not the good kind.

Like I said at the time, maybe I was spoiled from my time covering the Packers and Patriots (the Dolphins were a different story), but I had never seen an NFL receiver loaf as much as he did in practice. He wouldn't finish plays. He would walk back to the huddle and after dropped passes. And the amazing thing was nobody said anything to him (so he was being coddled again, just like at Baylor). In short, I didn't like what I saw. And, in a team environment, I would rather have a less-talented player who bought into the team concept more than Gordon.

I made most of my comments on Cleveland radio at the time, and they generated a lot of discussion. It was notable the coaching staff didn't disagree with my comments in the days following, and privately a few told me I was spot-on and were glad someone called out Gordon, because it sounded like they couldn't — "Maybe he'll get it," one texted at the time.

That was over five years ago. He's played in just 11 games in the past four NFL seasons.

If Gordon is the same type of practice player with the Patriots — and sources have told me that, unlike fellow troubled talents like Randy Moss and Dez Bryant who truly enjoy the game and practice hard, Gordon doesn't like football all that much and it is reflected in his practice habits — he's not going to last long. After being snuggled in the land of entitled players at Baylor and Cleveland, the environment he's going into with the Patriots will be a completely different world. I think Lombardi was talking along those lines in a recent tweet.

https://twitter.com/mlombardiNFL/status/1041789595350757376

Notice that I haven't even delved into Gordon's true impediment to success — his personal problems, which are plentiful and run much deeper than most realize (Gordon is on his third agent after being fired by Drew Rosenhaus and Joby Branion). At least, unlike fellow Patriots acts of desperation like Aqib Talib, Albert Haynesworth and Michael Floyd (I thought it was bad when the Patriots claimed Floyd and his $1.3 million salary for three games after a drunk-driving arrest — this might be worse), Gordon has mostly been a danger to himself and not others. But make no mistake, Gordon is in the same company as Steve Howe, Doc Gooden, Darryl Strawberry, Bob Probert, Michael Ray Richardson and Roy Tarpley when it comes to talented players with multiple substance abuse suspensions in professional sports (at least those other guys had more than one year of top-level production).

I'm not going to sit here and tell you Gordon will or won't be a success here (the chances are stronger that he won't fit into the culture and/or he'll have another slip up). Of course, he was worth the risk (Gordon came in No. 2 on my targets for a possible deal at the roster cutdown — the odds of his acquisition increased after the Patriots' pathetic receiver display vs. the Jaguars). He's that talented. And I think this is the much larger and important point: New England is so desperate at receiver it had to do this (we said when Kenny Britt was released that the personnel wasn't good enough).

Really, if we're being honest, it's pathetic they Patriots have gotten to the point they have to sign players that were basically useless bums at other places (Britt, Corey Coleman, Gordon — all former Browns). These are the New England Patriots we're talking about. Five-time Super Bowl champions. Bill Belichick. Tom Brady. Josh McDaniels, the brilliant offensive mind who could have had any head coaching job he wanted in recent years.

The franchise and its top names stand for excellence. They've built Super Bowl contenders every year for 18 years. Other teams aspire to do what they have done, all that sustained success.

But why the heck can't they ever develop a receiver? It's bordering on embarrassing. Actually ... after the acquisition of Gordon out of utter desperation, it is embarrassing.

We're talking about a position that, in today's NFL, you basically have three starters. In 2017, based on numbers from Football Outsiders, teams had three receivers on the field (the vaunted 11 personnel) 59.3 percent of the time (the Patriots used it a team-high 44 percent). Teams throw the ball 61.1 percent of the time. Three receivers basically make up 27.3 percent of the offensive lineup.

Yet, the Patriots have only one homegrown receiver on the roster — and counting Julian Edelman as one is borderline because, he a) was a college quarterback, b) was a seventh-round flier, c) sat on the roster for five seasons and, after finally proving himself in '13 as a starter, was allowed to visit teams as a free agent in '14 before re-signing for about $4 million per season.

Other than Edelman, who is halfway through his suspension, the Patriots have: Chris Hogan (signed to RFA tender from Buffalo), Phillip Dorsett (trade from Colts), Cordarrelle Patterson (trade from Raiders), and now Gordon (trade from Browns).

If you thought having just one homegrown receiver is a low number, you would be right. Using the depth charts at the scouting service OurLads.com, the Patriots are the only team with only one on the current roster. Only five teams have two, and the NFL average is 3.4. The Patriots have acquired three of their receivers by trade; no one else has more than one, and the NFL average is 0.4 per team.

[table id=141 /]

This goes to the larger and well-worn point about how poor the Patriots have been in not only drafting and developing receivers, but making basically anyone work at the position.

By my count, the Patriots have acquired 51 receivers just since 2009 (we won't even go back to the drought from Deion Branch and David Givens in '02 to the trades for Moss and Wes Welker in '07). Judging generously, you could say that four of those moves have been great (Edelman, Danny Amendola, Hogan and Brandin Cooks), and six have been solid to good (Brandon LaFell, Malcolm Mitchell, Dorsett, Patterson and Braxton Berrios — like we said, we're being generous). The rest — 80.4 percent — have been abject failures.

[table id=138 /]

With 12 of those players, the Patriots used actual capital to acquire them with either draft picks or trades. That's to say nothing of the time wasted on the practice field, in meeting rooms, and with reps from Brady that turned out to be fruitless.

That the Patriots are even this position where they need to trade for a player as suspect as Gordon is an indictment on the Patriots' entire system around the receiver position — and we shouldn't just whistle past the graveyard about it.

If your system is so complicated that 80 percent of the players can't function in it, maybe some things need to be looked at. Maybe things need to be dumbed down a bit. Maybe the playbook shouldn't be kept at Brady's doctorate level and instead should be more accessible to newer players.

On the defensive side of the ball, the Patriots are rightfully heralded for keeping things simple and being able to plug and play players at basically any position. Why can't it be that way on the offensive side?

And that basically none of the Patriots drafted receivers have done anything elsewhere in the league tells you their scouting methods could use a revamping as well.

Most of you will probably scoff at this criticism of the Patriots and will — rightly — point out the team's record of great success and how the offense has been in the top five in scoring every season since 2009 and, despite being 14th right now, will likely wind up there again no matter if Gordon soars or busts.

But even if it's not blatant, there is a downside to the Patriots' repeated failures at receiver. All of the assets and time they've wasted at the position takes away from what they can do at other spots. There's a trickle-down effect, whether it be on the cap or on draft picks that impact the depth at other spots on the roster.

Instead of drafting Tate, Price, Dobson and Boyce maybe they could have spent some assets to help the pass rush or find some linebackers who can cover. Instead of sending out three fifth-round picks (Gordon, Patterson, Keshawn Martin), and a young and promising backup quarterback (Jacoby Brissett) maybe the Patriots could have some young safeties to groom. Instead of accumulating $5,216,423 in dead cap money at receiver in the past five seasons by my rudimentary Internet calculations (to say nothing of the money wasted not having any players on rookie deals for years), the Patriots could have used that money on one more veteran at another position to help with depth each season.

Don't get things confused. The Patriots have been great, and will be great this season. But if they come up a few plays short of a Super Bowl title this season, or when they came up just short in '15, '13, '12 or any of the other seasons since '04 — or when you watch this team and wonder about most of the speed and athleticism on both sides of the ball — just remember all that has been squandered at the receiver position and whether it really needed to happen.

And if you're wondering why the Patriots had to turn to a player in Gordon who has either been suspended by the league or his team, or denied reinstatement, eight times in his six seasons in the league, just look back on the Patriots' dismal and ignominious track record at the receiver position — which is vital in today's NFL — in recent years.

That's how you end up with Josh Gordon.

[democracy id="18"]