'Living Fast': Sammy Watkins Recalling 'Mistakes' as Packers Visit Buffalo Bills

Sammy Watkins said he "prayed'' to leave Buffalo, and the Bills traded Watkins to the Rams and then in 2018, he signed with the Chiefs and he became a Super Bowl champion. And now he returns with the Packers.

Once upon a time, the Buffalo Bills invested a great deal in Sammy Watkins, believing that he was a special talent. And now, Watkins, now with the Green Bay Packers, is expressing excitement about his Sunday night return to Orchard Park.

“I just can’t wait to get there,” Watkins said.

That, of course, is a slightly different tune than the one Watkins was singing when he admitted some behavioral mistakes while employed by the Bills.

What he told Bleacher Report two years ago, written about in part ...

“Watkins partied ‘every night’ — yes, ‘every night,’ he repeats — turning downtown Buffalo’s Chippewa Street into his own personal frat party .. Beer, liquor. … Watkins didn’t discriminate in lighting his $12.8 million signing bonus on fire with friends who followed him north. ‘Living fast,’ he calls it, holding up a pretend blunt. Yeah, he smoked plenty too.

“Then he’d wake up, go to practice and suffer the consequences. Along the way, his body deteriorated. When he thinks back on it, he admits now: ‘Those injuries were largely a result of his own behavior.'” Watkins avoided the Bills facility the summer before he was traded and “idiotically, ripped the boot off his foot to jog around town.''

Watkins said he "prayed'' to leave Buffalo, and the Bills traded Watkins to the Rams and then in 2018, he signed with the Chiefs and he became a Super Bowl champion.

But now? 

“I had some of my best times there,” Watkins said this week. “People don’t know that was my childhood team and it still is my team. So, to play for an organization that I love, I liked growing up as a kid is definitely a blessing. And I have some of my best memories. My first child was [born] there. … A lot of replaying all the great times I had with the coaches and the team.”

Bills Mafia surely has strong feelings about all this. In the three games he’s appeared in this season, Watkins has eight receptions for 147 yards and zero touchdowns. Maybe he won't be a factor in the game on Sunday night, and we'll bet that Bills fans will be especially happy to find that Watkins has matured ... as long as Buffalo beats the Aaron Rodgers-led Packers in prime time.

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