No matter the NFL team, Watkins is just one man
Expecting pass-catcher to transform a QB into a franchise superstar is a load of Goff
For the second time in his young NFL career, receiver Sammy Watkins finds himself portrayed as the instant one-man solution.
The first time was in 2014, Watkins’ rookie year. The Buffalo Bills front office professed to be so certain the superstar college receiver from Clemson could turn E.J. Manuel — who mostly struggled as a rookie after the Bills selected him No. 16 overall — into a markedly improved QB in Year 2 that they said ridiculous things all spring and summer long.
“This game is about making plays and surrounding our quarterback with playmakers,” then-Bills general manager Doug Whaley said after Buffalo traded first- and fourth-round draft picks to move up to choose Watkins fourth overall. “He’s automatically going to make our quarterback better, and us better as a team. … This guy’s going to get us to the playoffs.”
Watkins did not make Manuel better. Buffalo’s head coach then, Doug Marrone, benched Manuel just four games into that 2014 season. Nor was Watkins able in 2015 or 2016 to help QB Tyrod Taylor improve more than a smidgen, and wouldn’t have even if he wasn’t always hobbling on a wonky foot.
So now, a week after the Bills traded him last Friday to the Los Angeles Rams, Watkins finds himself being similarly touted on a second NFL club.
Yes, it was done far less breathlessly by the Rams front office — “He’s a complementary piece,” GM Les Snead said of Watkins this week — but Snead did join first-year Rams head coach Sean McVay in predicting Watkins will immediately help spur improvement in Jared Goff, the franchise’s supposed on-field saviour.
The Rams drafted Goff No. 1 overall a year ago. The young passer picked up the particulars of an NFL-style passing attack so slowly as to look mostly dreadful in his late-season starts.
How can Watkins help? By enabling the Rams attack to stretch defences, Snead said. And there’s this:
“I think it certainly helps (Goff ),” McVay said, “because any time that you have good playmakers, where it makes it more difficult for defensive guys to be able to key in on one player, it certainly loosens up and regulates some of the coverages and I think it’ll be very helpful for our team, and especially for our quarterback.”
Shortly after the 24-year-old practised for the first time as a Ram on Wednesday, McVay said his “expectation” is Watkins will play “probably through the first quarter” in Saturday’s pre-season game at Oakland.
“Sammy’s number was called a handful of times,” the NFL’s youngest head coach said of Wednesday’s practice. “And he did a great job delivering. And Jared made good, accurate throws.”
Listen, folks. You could surround an over-his-head hamand-egger quarterback with four Hall of Fame pass catchers, and you know what? He’s still going to play like an over-his-head ham-and-egger, because he is what he is. Sure, he’d get bailed out a few extra times a game by his no-doubt super-frustrated star catchers, but super-frustrated fans won’t pull out any less hair.
That’s not to say Goff is a hamand-egger. He’s far more gifted than Manuel. A No. 1 overall talent Goff might yet prove to be — but if he can’t steer his can’t-miss career back on track in Year 2, then the addition of even Antonio Brown and Dez Bryant to the Rams offence next off-season wouldn’t make him much better.
A corps of top-flight receivers can make a good QB look great at times, but the addition of only one such receiver surely won’t make a bad or mediocre passer look good often enough to make much difference.
If Goff is going to realize his potential, it’s got to come from within.
Crushing Colts news: The last thing the Indianapolis Colts needed was another serious injury to a key offensive lineman. They’ve had enough of those in recent years. But head coach Chuck Pagano confirmed on Thursday that centre Ryan Kelly — the team’s first-round draft pick in 2016 — has a broken foot bone and is expected to miss six to eight weeks.
There’s still no word on when Andrew Luck might be ready to resume practising, and when he can play. The sixth-year QB is slowly recovering from winter surgery on a torn shoulder muscle.
Little from Lynch: Oakland Raiders running back Marshawn Lynch, at a rare news conference Thursday, was first asked to address the elephant in the room: the fact he sat during the U.S. national anthem at a Week 1 preseason game.
“I think that elephant just left the room, ’cause a little mouse ran in here,” Lynch said in avoiding the question. “Didn’t they say elephants are scared of (mice) or something? That mother-----left, cousin.”
Notes: 26-year-old centre Justin Britt signed a three-year contract extension with the Seattle Seahawks on Thursday.