It's the contract, not the player you're upset with.

Nelson Agholor was brought in to be the Patriots stretch receiver. Whether or not he was going to be receiver one was up for debate as many thought that role was going to Jakobi Meyers. Since this article isn't about Meyers we won't focus on that. The question is what is the job of a stretch receiver and do the Patriots agree with that?

There were those that wanted Agholor to be a number one but he had about half the targets of Meyers. Although Agholor only caught 37 of his 64 targets, his true catch percentage was 92.5%. Mac was barely 60% accurate throwing him the ball. So that has to take some blame off of Agholor, no?

Agholor was ranked 72 in separation and couldn't make a contested catch only coming away with 25% of them. He was a number four receiver as a contested catch guy. And seeing he was drawing double coverage, his ranking there makes sense. From all the stats listed above, anyone who believes a number one is a big play stretch receiver, then I get why you view Agholor as a failure.

What we saw when Agholor was on the field? He drew coverage as defenses were worried about his speed. What that did was open up the underneath guys and allow Bourne and Meyers to get open. He created the opportunity for others to be productive. If you wanted your stretch guy to do that then combined with his stats, Agholor was a success.

Although we would've all liked Agholor to have had a more productive season stat wise, some of the lack of productivity has to fall on Mac and McDaniels. Overall Agholor did what he was asked to by the Patriots. Agholor had signed a 2 year twenty two million dollar contract with fifteen million in guaranteed. That's pretty big.

So the questions for fans and the team has to be was he worth what he was asked to do? Did his salary create enough production from the underneath routes? And did he do enough as a number two statistically combined with the role he was asked to play and upgrade he added to the offense, warrent his large salary in 2022? That's how we as fans need to look at Nelson Agholor.

I get people wanted a number one but that's not who Agholor was asked to be and we cannot judge Agholor as a big play guy when the Patriots clearly view the slot as a number one. The slot receiver outside of Randy Moss has been the number one guy in New England. Gronk made Edelman's life easier but Edelman was either the number one or a very close second.

If you're wanting to judge someone on a number one receiver's role, you have to compare Meyers to Edelman or Welker and I don't hear anyone in Patriots Nation doing that. However, we must judge Agholor value in comparison to his salary among other number two's. You may or may not still find he's not worth the value but you be doing it accurately. I think many of us are going to find we want his contract restructured and him to take a paycut but what do the Patriots want?