Christian Watson has been an enigma in his Packers career. Outside of a few huge games his rookie year he’s been more potential than production. That changed this week.

The Buildup

Watson was shot out of a canon literally and figuratively in his rookie year. He had three hundred-yard games and seven touchdowns in the second half of the season. Watson was drafted to be a superior MVS and clearly looked the part in his rookie year – gliding past defenders and finally allowing LaFleur to push the ball down the field in his offense.

After garnering criticism for drafting an NDSU receiver with what amounted to a first-round pick, many analysts said they were ready to admit they were wrong after that strong eight weeks, and then came the sophomore slump.

Watson’s second season was littered with injury and inconsistency. He appeared in just nine games and amassed more than 90 yards just twice, going over 100 yards in neither of those games. Soft tissue injuries plagued him the whole season.

2024

Coming into Watson’s third season this summer, we started to hear rumbles about Watson getting studied at the University of Wisconsin to try to fix the hamstring problem. It turns out his right hamstring was far stronger than the left and it was causing issues when he went all out running that led to tears. The team had a plan in place to deal with the problem and then Watson should get back to how he looked in the back half of his rookie year.

Then the season started and Jordan Love got hurt and didn’t seem to have much chemistry with Watson and the big plays were few and far between. Through the first nine weeks, he missed a couple of games and had just 233 total receiving yards. Each week, Packers people would talk about how he was blocking his ass off and the plays were there they just weren’t hitting him. Some people said Love wasn’t getting the ball to him because of the injury, some said Love wasn’t fighting for contested catches, whatever the problem was it led to basically no production.

The Christian Watson Breakout

In a game without many positives for the Packers’ offense this week, Watson was the difference. He had catches of 7, 25 and 48 yards – each of the catches coming with a degree of difficulty we haven’t consistently seen from Watson.

If he can keep this up, Watson will bring a new level to this offense (already ranked in the top five via DVOA). Tucker Kraft, Josh Jacobs and Jayden Reed are all stars and have all played like stars this season – but they all specialize in the short to mid area. They can turn short or mid plays into big ones, but they can’t get open 40 yards downfield with ease – it’s just not how the plays are drawn up. Watson can.

If you can build an offense around Jacobs producing on the ground, Jayden Reed keeping the defense honest on constraint plays, Tucker Kraft making everyone miss on play action and then Watson getting open deep three times a game, it will be unstoppable.

We’ve had the first three of those things consistently but when a defense loads the box and plays press coverage, someone needs to take the top off. Christian Watson can be somebody.

Mike Price is a lifelong Packers fan currently living in Utah. You can follow him on twitter at @themikeprice.

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