We’re all excited about Sammy Watkins. I’m as guilty as everyone else. We all tend to get excited about the next big thing. It happens every year.
Watkins looks like the next Julio Jones.
But when it actually gets down to playing the games, it tends to take these guys a little while to get going. They’ve got to learn the nuances of the pro game and gets used to the bigger, better defensive backs and more complex coverages and offenses.
Plus, in this case, the Bills don’t throw it all that well.
Looking at the historical record, I see that 10 wide receivers have been selected in the top 5 in the past 20 years. I think it would be fair to say that we were all pretty excited about all of those guys.
But in their first years, none of those guys caught 70 passes. Only four of them caught 60. None of them caught 9 TDs. Most of them, in fact, caught fewer than 6. And just one 1,000-yard receiver in the lot – A.J. Green.
The average for those top-5 receivers (at least in Year 1) was 50 catches, 715 yards and 5 TDs. That’s probably a pretty fair year one estimate for Watkins, given his situation. I’m not opposed to drafting him, but it will be a big surprise if he’s a top-15 receiver in his first year.
| WIDE RECEIVERS IN TOP 5 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Player | No | Yards | Avg | TD |
| 1995 | Michael Westbrook | 34 | 522 | 15.4 | 2 |
| 1996 | Keyshawn Johnson | 63 | 844 | 13.4 | 8 |
| 2000 | Peter Warrick | 51 | 592 | 11.6 | 7 |
| 2003 | Andre Johnson | 66 | 976 | 14.8 | 4 |
| 2003 | Charles Rogers | 22 | 243 | 11.0 | 3 |
| 2004 | Larry Fitzgerald | 58 | 780 | 13.4 | 8 |
| 2005 | Braylon Edwards | 32 | 512 | 16.0 | 3 |
| 2007 | Calvin Johnson | 48 | 756 | 15.8 | 5 |
| 2011 | A.J. Green | 65 | 1057 | 16.3 | 7 |
| 2012 | Justin Blackmon | 64 | 865 | 13.5 | 5 |
| 2014 | Sammy Watkins | ? | ? | ? | ? |
—Ian Allan