Sammy Watkins is pissed about his targets, and he is not being a team player at all. Watkins has been targeted 13 times through three starts in 2015, but believes he should have at least 30 targets in those three appearances.
Watkins has let the Bills know what he wants, starting with more targets when he has one-on-one coverage.
“That’s what I get mad at,” Watkins said, “when I don’t get looked at. I can look at film and his eyes go straight that way and I’m not getting looked at, at all. That’s when I get frustrated. When I have one-on-one coverage, go to me. I don’t care what’s going on over there. I don’t care if he’s open. When I get one on one, just target me.”
Watkins should know about teams going to theirs at crunch time, because he tracks other top wide receivers like Julio Jones, Odell Beckham Jr., A.J. Green and others.
“Their quarterbacks go to them in every one-on-one situation,” Watkins said. “Force the ball. The only things that’ll happen are I catch it or knock it out.”
Watkins has been open about wanting 10 targets per game, regardless of who’s in at quarterback.
“Everybody looks at you getting zero catches, zero yards but when you look on film 90 percent of the time you’re open,” said Watkins, who is represented by Eugene Parker. “I understand that these guys are young and they need some time to trust me. Once we get that trust, it’ll be different. But for me, I need the ball at least 10 times — I need 10 targets — and I’ll be fine with however many yards I get. And that’s what I addressed in talking with my agent. We reached out to a couple people and tried to pull some strings like, ‘Hey, I need my targets. You came up to draft me and I’m not getting targets — that’s a problem. You’re making me look bad and you’re making yourself look bad. Why not make both of us look good?’”
As a rookie, Watkins was targeted 128 times in 16 starts, an average of eight targets per game.
By Glenn Erby