Sammy Watkins Completes $4 Million Deal to Sign With Green Bay

The Green Bay Packers have this week completed the signing of free-agent wide receiver Sammy Wakins in a deal said to be worth $4m. The 28-year-old left the Baltimore Ravens after a hit-and-miss season and will hope that a move to Lambeau Field can reinvigorate a career that has hit the buffers of late.

Watkins managed just one touchdown last season but is undoubtedly a player with ability, and Matt LaFleur will hope to get the most out of the 2019 Super Bowl champion.

 

Green Bay is certainly in the running for Super Bowl glory themselves this coming season. On sidelines.io, you can see that the Packers are well placed, currently sitting in the third spot in the futures betting at (+1000) behind the Buffalo Bills and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Watkins will have a part to play in that push.

Injuries have certainly stifled Watkins’s progress, and a fresh shot at Green Bay might be just what the doctor ordered. The Packers saw Devante Adams move to the Las Vegas Raiders, and Aaron Rodgers is said to be delighted by the arrival of the experienced Floridian.

 

Watkins has missed 30 games in seven seasons and hasn’t completed a full season since 2014, so there are obviously issues to overcome, hence the deal being a one-year contract and not longer.

Head coach LaFleur knows Watkins well from his time as a coordinator of the Los Angeles Rams offense, and that may well have played a part in the deal being struck.

 

LaFleur is keen to build on the good work he’s already done over the course of his first three seasons at Green Bay, during which he’s led the Packers to the postseason on three successive occasions, posting a 39-10 regular-season record in the process.

Aaron Rodgers remains the key man and is now into his 18th season at the Packers and is still a very capable performer. The 38-year-old, who is never short of things to say, has collected the NFL MVP award in each of the past two seasons (and has won it four times in total), but it’s now more than a decade since he collected his one and only Super Bowl ring and will hope to end that barren run in 2022-23.

 

Doing so will require Rodgers to dig deep once again, and he’ll need players of talent around him to make the Super Bowl dream a reality.

Watkins, it is generally accepted, is a calculated risk that the Packers and LaFleur are willing to take, and the fact that Green Bay is a little short on receiving options is something that will need to be further addressed before the offseason is completed.

Losing Adams has certainly left a massive hole to fill, and Watkins is only part of the process of filling that hole; and one imagines that Rodgers will be making this very point to Packers management on a regular basis from now until the opening game of the new season.