I'm in need of a wide receiver this week, due to bye weeks and injuries, and one of the guys on my radar is Sammy Watkins. He's facing his original team, but that's not really a consideration. It's more that he's likely to start and be a top-2 target. Is that enough to make him worth using?
Allen Lazard has a shoulder injury. Maybe it's nothing serious and he'll play, but I doubt it. Romeo Doubs has been a recent disappointment, and Aaron Rodgers might have called him out recently (subtly, but it seemed to be referencing Doubs when talking about receivers not stepping up). Watkins might well be the top option. I decided to take a look at how he's fared with a major workload the last few years.
Using the tools at pro-football-reference.com, I pulled the game logs for all games in the last four years when Watkins played more than half the snaps. How many times has he helped fantasy teams in those situations?
Here are the numbers. There have been 30 games the last four years where he's played more than half the offensive snaps. He's scored double-digit PPR points in exactly a third of those (10). That's not horrible, but it's not great; two-thirds of the time he got you under 10 points, so not a great choice.
And in just 2 of those 30 games did he reach 15 PPR points. Many will remember the biggest of those, when he blew up with 198 yards and 3 TDs for Kansas City, causing everyone to blow their waiver budget to make sure they could get him on their team. He never came close to those heights again -- just one more 15 point game.
In Green Bay (those games are in bold) he's played more than half the snaps three times. He scored 12.3, 5.6 and 4.8 fantasy points. So yeah, 1 out of 3.
I will probably look elsewhere for a waiver wire wide receiver.
| WATKINS WITH HALF THE SNAPS, 2019-PRESENT | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Tm | Opp | Tgt | Rec | Yds | TD | PPR |
| 2019 | K.C. | at Jac. | 11 | 9 | 198 | 3 | 46.8 |
| 2020 | K.C. | Hou. | 9 | 7 | 82 | 1 | 21.2 |
| 2021 | BAL | at L.V. | 8 | 4 | 96 | 0 | 13.6 |
| 2019 | K.C. | Min. | 10 | 7 | 63 | 0 | 13.3 |
| 2020 | K.C. | at Bal. | 8 | 7 | 62 | 0 | 13.2 |
| 2022 | G.B. | Chi. | 4 | 3 | 93 | 0 | 12.3 |
| 2019 | K.C. | Bal. | 8 | 5 | 64 | 0 | 11.4 |
| 2019 | K.C. | at Oak. | 13 | 6 | 49 | 0 | 10.9 |
| 2021 | BAL | at Det. | 7 | 4 | 68 | 0 | 10.8 |
| 2020 | K.C. | at N.O. | 6 | 4 | 60 | 0 | 10.0 |
| 2019 | K.C. | G.B. | 8 | 5 | 45 | 0 | 9.5 |
| 2019 | K.C. | at N.E. | 8 | 4 | 50 | 0 | 9.0 |
| 2019 | K.C. | at Ten. | 9 | 5 | 39 | 0 | 8.9 |
| 2021 | BAL | at Den. | 7 | 4 | 49 | 0 | 8.9 |
| 2019 | K.C. | at Det. | 6 | 3 | 54 | 0 | 8.4 |
| 2021 | BAL | K.C. | 7 | 4 | 44 | 0 | 8.4 |
| 2020 | K.C. | N.E. | 7 | 4 | 43 | 0 | 8.3 |
| 2019 | K.C. | Den. | 4 | 3 | 49 | 0 | 7.9 |
| 2021 | BAL | at Chi. | 4 | 3 | 48 | 0 | 7.8 |
| 2020 | K.C. | at T.B. | 7 | 4 | 38 | 0 | 7.8 |
| 2020 | K.C. | Den. | 6 | 4 | 35 | 0 | 7.5 |
| 2020 | K.C. | at Mia. | 3 | 2 | 52 | 0 | 7.2 |
| 2022 | G.B. | at Was. | 4 | 2 | 36 | 0 | 5.6 |
| 2019 | K.C. | at Chi. | 5 | 2 | 28 | 0 | 4.8 |
| 2022 | G.B. | at Min. | 3 | 3 | 18 | 0 | 4.8 |
| 2019 | K.C. | at LAC | 3 | 2 | 26 | 0 | 4.6 |
| 2020 | K.C. | Atl. | 4 | 2 | 14 | 0 | 3.4 |
| 2020 | K.C. | at LAC | 3 | 1 | 11 | 0 | 2.1 |
| 2019 | K.C. | LAC | 2 | 1 | 8 | 0 | 1.8 |
| 2019 | K.C. | Oak. | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 |
--Andy Richardson