TheSkeptic wrote: ↑01 Apr 2022 11:42
Why do you like Sammy Watkins? He is a 400 yard per season WR with 3 total TD's over the last 2 seasons. He is an 8 year veteran and is basically a WR#3. Why do you think he has potential beyond what he has produced over the last 2 seasons?
I'm glad you asked.
Basically because he was injured last year. His start to the season, getting basically 4 catches for 60 yards per game, before injury, in a run-first offense with no other weapons, was solid. In KC, he was asked to do more dirty work. His role was not to get targets, but to support the focal points of the scheme, Tyreek Hill and Travis Kelce. I posted recently a list of the #2 WRs in KC's offense over the years and it was closer to 500 yards more often than it was to 800 yards. Most of his career, he has been in run-first offenses or offenses that had other focal points, and he has been a role player.
Now, he isn't going to suddenly be an elite #1. But we need a guy who is a starting caliber outside receiver who is also willing to play an unselfish role. And we need a guy who knows how to run routes and who has the physical build to perform a variety of tasks.
His 4.33 speed is likely gone, sapped by some injury and time. But he's still a 4.4s guy, for sure.
So what we have here is a guy who is 28 years old. His past two seasons, he has underperformed due to injuries. If he were 32 and had two rough injury years, you think "this guy is done." But going into aged 29 season? Injuries mean he's cheap, not washed.
I asked my buddy who's a smart football fan and a Ravens fanatic what he thought of Sammy Watkins this year. His answer was "Very tough guy who was good at what he does that was injured all year. Mad respect."
I also looked for some analysis of what people were saying when he joined the Ravens last year. Given that the Ravens were an offensive mess this year, and that Watkins clearly wasn't the same guy when he returned from injury (and left the lineup again shortly after, indicating he rushed back), I wanted to see how he was viewed coming off of only
one down year.
The quotes I saw from Watkins were exactly what I'd like to see. He blended the unselfish, play for each other and the team not for ourselves rhetoric with the "I'm ready to play somewhere where my role is less to open things up for others and more to catch the ball"
So he's a guy who is 6'1", 210ish pounds, played for MLF with the Rams in 2017, can run faster than most of our current receivers, understands the nature of role playing at WR but is hungry to go somewhere where he can receive more targets, runs pretty good routes, has some juice left, and is incredibly cheap because he's coming off of back-to-back years of being banged up enough to neuter his production.
I know he's a couple years older, but this is the kind of "he has the traits but has rarely been placed in a scheme to accentuate them" value that Campbell presented to us.
Size, budget, scheme fit and familiarity, athletic traits that still show up in his game, team-first guy. Why on earth WOULDN'T I want him?
