Maybe, but fwiw, Collins is five years younger than Danny, and Shelton is closer to 10 years younger. It's tough to thread the needle between 'experienced' and 'old', but adding Amendola to fellow 30+ receivers Edelman and Hogan (and Thomas) might be too much of the latter.Maybe it's just working out this way, but it really feels as though Bill is putting very heavy stock in getting guys he knows.
With Brady playing at his all time high cap number and with the Patriots having other cap challenges even with Gronk's retirement, and with the turnover of coaches, Bill seems to be taking refuge in seeing if he can be competitive in a tough year by going with known quantities. You sort of wonder if he could have foreseen some of the moves that would free up cap space when he was looking for a receiver if he would have taken a harder look at Amendola. At the time, the cap space situation looked really rough, but in retrospect it sort of looks like it would have been a move that would have fit in pretty well with some of the other stuff he's doing.