Sammy Watkins’ eight-catch, 168-yard performance on Sunday afternoon at Ralph Wilson Stadium was one of the great “Eff You” games ever turned in by a Bill or Sabre, at least that I can remember. Maybe it wasn’t so much an “Eff You” to anyone in particular, be it small-minded fans or the local media (which can also be small minded at times), but it was definitely an “I’ll show you” performance. Sammy showed us why the Bills moved up to No. 4 overall and parted with an extra first round pick to get him. He showed us why Ohio State couldn’t stop him during the 2014 Orange Bowl. He showed us why he’s right when he said to the Buffalo News that he should be seeing 10 targets a game.
Watkins’ performance goes right to the top of the list with other great Buffalo “Eff You” performances. Cookie Gilchrist, who often clashed with Lou Saban and Ralph Wilson, ran for 122 yards in Buffalo’s AFL Championship Game win over San Diego, just weeks after being suspended from the team for taking himself out of a game. (More importantly, Gilchrist helped lead the boycott of the 1964 AFL All-Star Game in still-segregated New Orleans). Maxim Afinogenov scored the overtime winner in Game 5 of the playoff series against the Rangers in 2007, just one game after winding up in Lindy Ruff’s doghouse and being a healthy scratch. Jim Kelly once pointed out members of the assembled media he thought were liars after beginning a postgame press conference by asking if any of them actually believed the Bills were going to win a late-season game in New Orleans in which several key players were out with injuries. He also once threw a ball at the press box after a touchdown in a blowout win against Washington in 1996. Kelly had been taking heat from the local press about his declining play in what would be his last season.
You can argue Thurman Thomas’ entire career was an “Eff You” performance. He wanted to show all the teams that passed on him in the 1988 Draft that he was worthy of a first round pick. He also often refused to talk to the local media during the week leading up to games (especially Miami games) and often responded with some of his best performances. Dominik Hasek responded to accusations that he quit on his team in the 1997 playoffs by (choking Jim Kelley) posting a second-consecutive Hart Trophy-winning season.
For Watkins, his performance against Miami was as good a response as I can remember, but it’s not over for him. He’ll constantly have to keep proving himself for the rest of his career to win over fans who will always be skeptical of Watkins for a number of reasons, but the main beef some seem to have with Watkins were his comments on Instagram about members of the fan base being losers.
There’s a lot to unravel and discuss here about Watkins that goes far beyond one Buffalo News article or one Instagram post. Many fans have been looking for a reason to call out Watkins simply because he hasn’t been as good as Odell Beckham Jr. through the first season and a half of their respective careers. He gave many of them all the ammunition they needed simply being getting hurt, making a few comments in the newspaper, and telling the most abusive fans on social media to back off. That’s it.
I’ll get my opinions out of the way first. I’m certainly no scout, but I know Watkins is very, very good. He’s had the potential to be one of the best receivers in the league since the moment he put on a Bills hat on draft day. He does things to opposing defensive backs that are simply obscene. Just ask Brent Grimes. His quarterbacks have not been very good, so he usually doesn’t put up eye-popping fantasy numbers because he doesn’t see the ball enough.
Watkins has been hampered by the occasional injury, but he’s missed a grand total of three out of 24 games the Bills have played since the start of the 2014 season. I agree with him in saying he should be getting the ball more often. Watkins has yet to be targeted more than eight times in a game this season. When he’s been targeted, he’s produced. He has touchdowns in three of the five games he’s played this season. He’s been targeted 26 times in those five games and only seven of those targets ended up as incompletions. He was right to say that he should be seeing the ball more and it matters not to me that he had to go to the newspaper to make that known.
As for Watkins’ now-infamous Instagram post, I mean, can you blame him for what he said? I’d be pretty upset too if every day I opened my Twitter feed or Instagram page and saw comments directed at me calling me out for being hurt or being selfish or whatever other problem angry people have at me. How tiring must it be to read that vitriol over and over again? In Watkins’ case, I’m sure some of it has a racial tone to it as well.
Now, you can argue that he’s a professional athlete and should expect this, but he’s also a human being just like you and I. If his greatest sin is simply getting hurt and now being able to play for your favorite team like you think he should, how can you possibly justify calling him names to his face on social media?
As to be expected, the local media used Watkins’ Instagram post as an excuse to call out Watkins, claiming he embarrassed himself and the Bills organization with his comments. This isn’t the first time Jerry Sullivan has called out a Bills player for being an embarrassment to the organization. He said the same thing about Marcell Dareus after his drag racing incident last summer. Dareus responded with a Pro Bowl season and earned a nice $96 million check from the organization he supposedly embarrassed. In Watkins’ case, he hasn’t even come close to doing anything that could actually be considered as troublesome off the field. I don’t have to list all the various off-field incidents that dominate the league’s headlines. In Buffalo, Watkins gets shredded for using social media. One of the first questions Rex Ryan got at his postgame press conference on Sunday was about Watkins “getting into trouble off the field.” Telling morons on Instagram to back off is trouble?
This brings us to another issue in the matter, which is that many of the older fans, beat writers, and columnists in this town don’t understand how social media works. It’s definitely a generational thing. You can tell by the way many of the older writers react to criticism on Twitter. Some seem to be incapable of engaging fans in a direct conversation or understanding how to take constructive criticism. More to the point, those who don’t use social media but want to kill Watkins for what he posted probably don’t understand how the realm works. As someone who often sees some of the awful things people say on Twitter, I know what kind of responses Watkins can expect if he posts ANYTHING on Twitter. There’s always a faction of imbeciles waiting to respond with ignorant or vile takes. Someone like my 58-year-old father doesn’t realize what Watkins has to see on his Twitter every day. Someone like him thinks Watkins is calling out ALL Bills fans, not just the absolute lowest of the low on social media. Of course, the local reporters were happy to play up the “calling out fans” angle (Watkins LASHES OUT headlines).
What we had here in Buffalo during the bye week was the perfect storm of ugliness. We had a frustrated athlete being honest about how he felt and dealing with hostile fans, frustrated themselves over 15 consecutive playoff-less seasons from our favorite football team. We had reporters willing to stir the pot and make Watkins’ Instagram response out to be more than it actually was. This is the kind of stuff that happens when your franchise is a perennial loser. Anger builds up and anyone can become the scapegoat at any time. With a few missed games and a few words that went viral, so to speak, Watkins became the target of misplaced hostility from those who have the intellectual capacity of a small soap dish. I think this incident reveals more about how ugly some of the lunatic fringe can be on social media more than it does about a star athlete who simply wants to play and help his team win.
Hopefully this is all behind us after Sunday. Sammy’s spectacular 44-yard touchdown grab from Tyrod Taylor on Sunday, featuring a Randy Moss-like “I’m open!” hand-up gesture as he blew bye his guy, was followed with loud “Sammy! Sammy!” chants from the capacity crowd. I saw more than one local reporter refer to this as the fans “forgiving him,” as if it’s Watkins who’s been out of line and needs to earn back the respect of fans. He doesn’t owe the worst of the fan base anything. Winning makes everything better and that was certainly the case on Sunday. But Watkins will likely have to do this often to appease many of those just waiting for him to slip up. This just in: I think he’s capable of doing it.
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