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“I’m not even supposed to be here today!” – Dante Hicks, Clerks
When you think of a bye week, particularly for a team that’s 3-4 and in need of a “come to Jesus” type moment, the last thing I thought I’d see was another kerfuffle in the media. How wrong was I? After Sammy’s rant (article by Jay Skurski), which was mentioned by several members of fandom and media via twitter and elsewhere I’m sure (I’m on a radio/tv/sirius hiatus until next week) became topic du jour I was more than willing to jump in and advocate for athletes to have well within their rights to defend themselves. But then came Sully’s piece. We’ll get to that, but I promise you as a writer on this site that I’m not going to FMJ a Sully piece after this for the rest of the year – it’s just not worth the energy. But once more into the breach I shall go…after we talk tweets.
Consider some of the tweets coming Sammy Watkins’ way – here’s a sample:
@sammywatkins play through the pain. We all do
— Norman Bates (@Madison_Weso12) October 28, 2015
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If “Play through the pain, we all do” isn’t a poster child for someone crying for help, I do not know what is. And the ‘Norman Bates’ nom de plume is also a little unsettling.
Every year an argument that player x is greedy and player y is a team player taking a pay cut ignores that Owner z will make several hundred million regardless of the situation. I’ll get to that point a little more in a bit, but that money made by a player doesn’t entitle you, or I or anyone to demand they sacrifice their bodies, their minds and their will (again, more on that) for the sake of a sport. I can’t and won’t ever think that. Sammy had a picture of himself and his daughter in one of the happiest places in America, on a team-sanctioned and encouraged vacation during bye week to re-charge. Which brings us to Sully’s piece…
Well, I suppose it should have come as no surprise to find that, two days into the bye week, a player on the dumbest, most emotionally fragile team in the NFL would go on social media and say something incredibly stupid.
Sammy Watkins embarrassed himself and the Bills organization Tuesday night when he posted a message on Instagram that said anyone who questioned his willingness to play hurt was a jealous loser with a pathetic, dead-end job.
First paragraph in, I’m not going to fight him. Based on the penalties, the up and down nature of the season (injuries notwithstanding) and the meltdowns we’ve all seen, he’s not wrong. He’s also not wrong in Watkins’ assessment of the folks who questioned his willingness to play hurt. I also agree with Watkins in his assertion – if you think a pro athlete needs to play hurt and are writing on their instagram, facebook, myspace, twitter, etc. I can put the Venn diagram of your issues outside of the internet, pro sports and making America great again most likely in a circle.
Here’s his unedited post, which accompanied a photo of Watkins and his daughter at Disney World. You can read it and draw your own conclusions:
“To all the people that have a problem with me being injured you guys go out there and play this sport it’s a 100% injury rate, I’m not first or last person that’s gone be injured difference from me and you guys y’all mad and I’m not get a life and goto work stop worrying about my job because I’m good on this end and forever will be losers most of you just wish to be in this position so continue working y’all little jobs for the rest of y’all lives since everyone once a response here go one have a blessed day.”
Watkins later took down the post, which is standard practice for athletes who make rash statements and regret them a few seconds later. Sammy backpedaled on Twitter, too, telling fans that the original message wasn’t intended for them – as if no real Bills fan would ever question a player. He deleted that post, too.
I enjoy the “make your own conclusions” then add your conclusions and paint the picture that’ll last throughout the article. And of course the ‘unedited’ as the post is filled with grammatical and spelling errors. Sully’s only competition for walking a reader into a trap they should’ve seen coming is the woman from the Hansel and Gretel stories. That’s how good his game is – darn near fairy tale turned to life. I will concede the point on a “real fan” not questioning a player. I’ve questioned players over the years that Sully has exalted (cough Kelsay cough cough Schobel) and in Tim Graham’s piece on Aaron Maybin, we saw first hand how Schobel practiced akin to a high school player hating JV kids pushing back in practice. But at the time, he was a favored son of Sully, but that’s lost now. Moving on…
This is the same guy who complained about not getting the ball enough and admitted having his agent whine to management – then told the reporter, Tyler Dunne, to “grow up” for not putting a more positive spin on his self-serving comments.
What Watkins ought to do is shut up, get healthy, and start justifying the Bills’ decision to trade two 2015 draft picks, including a first-rounder, to get him in the 2014 draft. He comes off as thin-skinned, two-faced and buckling under the weight of expectations.
Watkins committed the athletes’ cardinal sin: reading criticism on social media and reacting in public. You can’t win that battle. I try to avoid them as much as possible. There’s a lot of ugliness out there, even in this “little job” of mine. It’s simply not worth the trouble.
There are several things here that need to be teased out, because I want this to be a nuanced discussion/rebuttal and not just me frothing at the mouth about an editorial. Tyler Dunne wrote a fair piece, that I thought got to the heart of what’s going to be Watkins’ albatross his entire career – his draft status. Dunne also included great quotes that highlights Watkins owning that albatross and asking to be given an opportunity to prove he’s worth what they paid.
To me, Watkins did not come across in the article as self-serving, thin skinned or two faced. A writer (Sully) that writes editorials and seeks quotes – and has in the past complained that the owner/gm/coach of the hockey team weren’t around? That’s self serving, because he’s conveniently leaving out the symbiotic nature of the sports writer. You need the subject to be open enough to get their perspective and I thought Tyler Dunne did that. Watkins shouldn’t have written the “grow up” tweet – that was something borne of seeing the salacious version that got legs of the article, carried by the man whose name rhymes with crock at ESPN.
Again, an athlete with a twitter account seeing (and hearing) that he’s essentially been debased from a guy trying to earn his keep to the worst amalgam of the talented 21st century (black) player may lead to some rash judgment. But where is the ESPN article that says “Jim Kelly destroys Bills” when he says that Tyrod by far was the best QB the team has had, while EJ is standing nearby about to play in the U.K.? Nowhere, because we all generally agree that’s the truth. So why can’t Sammy say, “You paid the equivalent of 3 players for me, let me prove it was worth it?” Finally, the “little job” mention isn’t wrong – you can’t win the battle vs. the mob, but when one of the parts of your job is to create pieces that enthrall and encourage said mob, my sympathies are lost.
For a highly paid athlete, responding is even worse. To call people losers and make a snide reference to their “little jobs” is unforgivably stupid. Even the best fans think professional athletes are overpaid and that they don’t appreciate the hard-working fans who pay to see them perform.
Watkins isn’t a bad guy. It’s nice to see him take his daughter to Disney during the bye, instead of running off to a strip club or gun show like so many of today’s athletes. He’s frustrated, and it’s understandable. Watkins was brought here to help EJ Manuel, but the shaky quarterback situation isn’t doing him any favors.
But it’s a regrettable fact that he’s injury-prone since coming to Buffalo. He has suffered seven different injuries in a year and a half. In his defense, he has played hurt a lot. He played all 16 games as a rookie last year, despite bruised ribs, an injured groin and a hip injury that required offseason surgery.
Money – that’s really what this comes down to. We all need it, we’d all like more of it. I do not begrudge a single person that has hit the jackpot in pro sports or elsewhere their due and I know I’m in the minority there. But to see some of the filth (which I refused to give a platform here) and outright racist things said to Watkins, or Manuel, or McKelvin after his fumble vs the Pats…you see my point. These little windows into the heart of some fans, much like other parts of society show the racial progress made in the country has been good, but needs to continue.
Essentially, while these players are performing, they’re one of the “good ones” and can be tolerated. When they are under performing or lesser in some regard the diatribes come out. I remember sitting in section 201 during the Cowboys-Bills Monday Night Football game a few years ago and hearing someone saying “at least we stopped that N–” in regards to T.O. not having the best game. Dollars to Donuts when he signed with Buffalo 2 years later that person was screaming her head off for the same guy. I hate at times having to be the guy that brings some of this crap up, but if we don’t discuss it, it never changes.
Sullivan is fair in his assessment of Watkins, his injuries and the quarterback situation. But he failed to mention the head coach(es) that pushed him back too early instead of allowing him to heal and be the best player for them long-term, they focused on him returning for a short-term record inflation (Marrone) or to maintain goodwill/honeymoon status (Ryan). If anything I’d challenge Sully or someone from TBN to shine a light on how many players have come back at times drastically sooner than the initial prognosis only to re-injure themselves. That’s the “will” part I started with earlier in this treatise. Fans, even some that’ll read this think that players cannot be “forced” to do anything. I disagree. Consider the advent of the ‘roster bonus’ based by week. Essentially, this cap (team) friendly deal says for every week you’re on the active 47 to play you get your bonus, which in prior years was just your salary. So while you’ve done this great thing for your cap, you’re forcing a player to determine if full health is worth giving up that money. That’s…dirty. Really, really dirty.
This year, he’s been set back by calf and ankle ailments. He seemed to rush back for the Bengals game because he felt the team needed him and he was feeling the pressure to measure up to the other members of the gifted 2014 receiver class, many of whom have outperformed him in their first season and a half in the league.
Watkins injured the ankle making a diving touchdown pass of a poorly thrown Manuel pass in the end zone. It had to be galling to hear from anonymous goofballs on social media, ripping him for not playing hurt last Sunday in London.
I’ve always been careful not to question the physical courage of an NFL player. As Watkins said in his Instagram post, everyone is hurt in this sport at some point. It’s a league that denied for years the fact that the sport caused brain damage. Most pro football players pay a dear price later in life, sometimes the ultimate price.
I agree with Sully throughout this entire part – which also brings to mind the point that he is a good writer. If he were just a hack that ended with #AllLivesMatter or something like that it’d be easy to dismiss, it’s more disappointing, more angering that he does ‘get it’ but chooses to pander to the lowest of the common denominator – the dog whistle crowd.
But that’s not the point. There’s a tenuous relationship between players and fans nowadays. The typical fan doesn’t care about the long-term health of the players, who are disposable mercenaries. Most players aren’t naive enough to think the average beer-swilling fan cares about them as human beings.
It’s a business, and it’s bad business for a player to shove his millions in the face of a fan base that bought the most season tickets in Bills history this year. Most people won’t make the finer distinctions in Watkins’ comments. They’ll think he dismissed them all as losers.
The question isn’t Sammy’s physical courage, but his toughness of mind. When Doug Whaley paid heavily to draft Watkins, he made him the centerpiece of the operation, a player to build around. He did not expect Watkins to be a coddled diva who used his agent to leverage more catches and insulted the Buffalo fans.
Again, he couches a really good point and then hairpin turns to please the mob. I didn’t think Watkins was talking to me – because I don’t have the time to tweet a hateful message to a player because they played bad. I will tweet @buffalobills to remind them that writing puff pieces won’t make the record better, or make me forget how supportive their articles were on every. single. coach. until after they were fired, or whitewash Buddy Nix’s role in anything positive, pointing it instead to Whaley. But they’re the team’s site. I get it. Talking to the team through the agent is better than kicking the door down (while they just got a new coach) and demanding. I thought it was professional. But we’re about to get to the part where the old lady in the story asks you to just step a little…bit…more…into the oven.
This is another smudge on Whaley’s resume as general manager. He admitted putting his reputation on the line when he mortgaged the farm to draft Watkins. He needed a franchise rock. Instead, he got a player who can’t stay healthy and can’t stay out of the headlines.
Worse yet, Watkins is becoming a poor reflection of Rex Ryan’s loose brand of leadership. Ryan doesn’t muzzle his players. He takes pride in treating them like men, even when they demonstrate the judgment and maturity of adolescents.
A-HA! There we go. So all of this, at the end is to set up that Whaley isn’t a good general manager and that all players are adolescents. The Whaley part we’ve covered here to death. Should he be fired, first find Michael Necci and tell him he was wiser than most seeing it coming, then wait for all the puff pieces for the “people’s choice” per TBN, most likely a Polian family member or protege.
There’s a scene in Mad Max: Fury Road, where an older woman is standing guard below a sign written on the wall that says “We Are Not Things”. Players are not things, they are millionaire (thousandaire in cases) adults. The NFL has made a lot of things very easy to jump to conclusion wise and this maturity thing is one of the worst of all. Because, let us not forget people were reacting to a picture of a man and his daughter enjoying their time together on vacation. Some of those people may not be able to afford to go on vacation and may have seen that as an affront. However, Sammy Watkins didn’t hurt you. The Buffalo Bills did. Your disappointment is at the organization, not the employee. The sooner you can figure that out, the sooner you can realize that selling hope has been very lucrative with very little in return for nearly 20 years. Sammy Watkins was a fan before he became a player. Do you think he will be after?
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