‘I’d rather win.’ Sammy Watkins says he took less money to return to Chiefs
Many Chiefs fans thought the “Run It Back” tour wouldn’t include wide receiver Sammy Watkins.
At the start of April, the Chiefs reportedly had a mere $177 of cap space and Watkins was due to be paid a base salary of $13.7 million that counted $21 million against the cap. It doesn’t take a mathematician to see figured why Watkins seemed a candidate to be a salary cap casualty.
Instead, on April 3, Watkins and the Chiefs agreed on a restructured one-year deal with a $9 million base salary and an incentive package worth up to $16 million.
Watkins was on SiriusXM NFL Radio with hosts Alex Marvez and Gil Brandt on Tuesday night and explained why he wanted to stay with the Chiefs rather than seek a potentially bigger deal elsewhere.
“I’m in the stage of my life now to where, at first I was like, ‘Man, forget that. I want to get paid big money again,’” Watkins said. “But then I realized, how much money do I need? My family’s taken care of well. Do I want I go to a team and lose, and get a thousand yards or go to a team that’s sorry, whatever the case may be? Or do I want to come back with one of the best coaches, the best quarterbacks, the best organizations, the best team, the best wideout group, arguably, and come try to fight for another championship?
“I kind of sat my agent down, and he was trying to shoot for these big (dollar) numbers. And I’m like, ‘Man, let’s just take heed of winning. I’ve been on a winning team with the three years. I know how it felt to win. Shoot, I’d rather win another championship than go get another whatever type of crazy extension or crazy contract.”
The Chiefs are returning 20 of 22 starters from their Super Bowl LIV championship team, and Watkins is fired up at the thought of going for a second straight title.
“Literally we have everybody back. Every coach, every player, and I think everybody that needed to get paid got paid,” Watkins said. “I think they’re definitely working on Chris Jones contract, I don’t know how that works but now we have everything we need in house and we don’t have to start over.
“We don’t have to go search for any moving parts and I just think now we have to understand as a team, we’ve got a bull’s-eye on our back and we have to work 10 times harder this year because it’s not gonna be easy. And I’m just ready really just to start back training camp to move past this COVID-19. I can’t wait.”
Speaking of players who got paid, Watkins said he knew quarterback Patrick Mahomes would get a massive contract deal. Watkins put Mahomes up with Lakers star LeBron James and Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady as the biggest sports stars in the United States.
Despite that, Watkins was stunned to hear details of Mahomes’ 10-year extension that could see him get paid $503 million.
“We were just going through our group messages as the wideouts and our coaches,” Watkins said, “and once we’d seen a 10-year deal, we were like this is going to be worth a billion dollars.
“Ten years? When we got that 10-year extension time, we were like, ‘Man, what the frick is going to happen? Like what’s gonna go on?’ We never heard of a contract that big or that many years added to a contract ever in history.”
Watkins wasn’t the only one blown away by the details of that deal as it sent shock waves through the NFL.
Nevertheless, Watkins expects Mahomes won’t change despite the bigger paychecks:
