After suffering a torn ACL in January, it’s impressive that Patriots receiver Wes Welker is playing at all this season. But that doesn’t mean he’s playing up to his own standards.
Halfway through the season, Welker has 44 catches for 355 yards, which puts him on pace to have by far the least productive of his four years in New England. And Welker acknowledges that part of his problem is that he doesn’t feel like he’s completely comfortable with his surgically repaired knee.
“Yeah, it’s getting to the point of just trusting my knee and knowing that it’s going to be fine,” Welker told the Boston Herald. “Not that there’s doubt, but subconsciously [when you’re out there], you think there might be doubt. So for me, it’s getting past that and getting that muscle memory back.”
Welker says he plans to keep wearing a brace on his knee for the rest of the season, and although that might slow him down a bit, he’d feel less confident without it. And he says it’s just natural that it’s going to take him some time to get back to where he was before the injury.
“I don’t think you’re fully back until a full year, and even then, I think people think you go through an injury like that and you’re just supposed to come back the same when, over the offseason, I’m usually training instead of rehabbing,” Welker said. “There’s a difference. . . . I still feel like I can play at a very high level now, and that’s my job every time I step out there.”