Wes Welker said the botched punt return that gave the New England Patriots a win in a gritty game against Welker’s Denver Broncos was his fault.
“I just felt like there was a lot of traffic, it was a high ball, [I] basically didn’t want to get into a situation where somebody’s running into me or anything else, and ended up with a situation that I didn’t want to happen in the first place,” Welker said, reported CSNNE.com.
The punt came after a crazy game that saw the Patriots come back after being down 24-0 at halftime. The teams went into overtime on the bitter cold and windy evening and no one seemed to be able to score until the botched punt return.
Elaborating on what could have been done differently, Welker said he could have yelled “Peter!”--which tells the blockers to get away from the ball--sooner.
“I gotta do a better job of getting up there and getting those guys out of the way, and making sure it doesn’t hit them,“ he said. ”I gotta get to him earlier and tell him, and get those guys out of the way if I’m not going to make the catch. I was a little bit in between and you can’t be that way.”
