GREEN BAY, Wis. – The sun may not be setting often in Green Bay this time of year, but the Packers' wide receiver's future is very bright.
General manager Brian Gutekunst declined to add a wide receiver with more than two years of NFL experience during the offseason. He saw his team through training camp and passed on adding a veteran player again. Even when injuries hampered Green Bay's receiving corps during the season, Gutekunst stuck with what he had.
In doing so over the past nine months, the Packers have provided their first- and second-year receivers with invaluable opportunities to throw them into the fire. Not only did they withstand the fire; They turned it off. That was the case again Sunday in a 17-9 playoff win over the Chicago Bears when a young Packers team showed that the present and future of the position is in good hands — literally.
They'll have another chance to prove their worth in all of their first games of the playoffs when the No. 7-seeded Packers visit the No. 2-seeded Dallas Cowboys on Sunday afternoon in the postseason wild card round.
“We’re young,” said Bo Melton, a 2022 seventh-round pick. “But at the end of the day, it doesn't matter when you go on the field. You're not young anymore. You have to play.”
They've already played, as the Packers already appear to have six wide receivers for next season's 53-man roster — Christian Watson, Romeo Dobbs, Jayden Reed, Dontaevion Weeks, Milton and Malik Heath. They are all 24 years old or younger. Watson, Dobbs and Milton are sophomores and Reed, Wicks and Heath are rookies.
Watson may be the biggest question for the group after missing eight games this season with hamstring injuries, including the last five, but he has proven to be a game-changer when he is on the field due to his ability to snatch the top off a defense while doing so. Everything is underneath too. Doubs, who Tucker Craft named the toughest hands on the team, won't stretch the field as much but is as dependable as they come when you need a first down. Reid may actually be the best of the bunch, as his combination of volatility, hands and speed is lethal for defenses. Weeks is just a player, absorbing the heavy blows this season while holding the ball in big moments. Milton, who spent about two weeks on the active roster this season, has suddenly emerged as a reliable option for quarterback Jordan Love in both wide and tight windows. And Heath, who's good at hunting if you need him, is the new “War Father” of the group due to his knack for throwing his nose into a block.
Add two promising rookie tight ends in Luke Musgrave and Kraft, along with the guy who throws them all the ball, and you get a big part of the reason why Wayne Larrivee, the legendary radio play-by-play voice of the Packers, chanted, “The future is now,” when the Packers won. In Sunday's match. The Packers gained 4,210 receiving yards this season and 3,642 of them (86.5 percent) came from first- or second-year players. Thirty-one of Love's 32 touchdown passes went to starters or sophomores.
“It was really tough,” Love said of getting to the playoffs with a historically small offense. “Going into this process, we had to grow together and continue to get everyone on the same page and work out bugs and things that didn't seem too early on…it's been a process. It's definitely not been easy and that's a credit to everyone at “The locker room is finding ways, like I said, to get better every week, improve their game and eliminate that mentality that we're just a young team. People have stepped up tremendously.”
That growth began with Love inviting skilled skill players to California to work out with him last spring. It continued with Love hosting a dinner and crime movie session at his home every Monday this season. It ended, at least in the regular season, with another productive showing in a win-or-go-home Week 18 game.
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Against the Bears, Reed had four catches for 112 yards, including a 59-yard catch-and-run early in the fourth quarter to set up a field goal that put the Packers up by eight and a 15-yard grab. Third-and-2 with the Packers on the 14-yard line, up by eight, late in the fourth quarter. Milton was up for five more catches for 62 yards, bringing his four-game total to 16 catches for 218 yards and a touchdown after the Seattle Seahawks opted not to catch a pass heading into Week 15.
Weeks reeled in six passes for 61 yards and both Packers' touchdowns on a day in which he was motivated by something much bigger than a potential playoff berth.
Sunday was Lavelle Davis Jr.'s 22nd birthday. Davis, Weeks' teammate and fellow wide receiver at Virginia, was one of three Cavaliers football players shot and killed on campus in late 2022. After Weeks' first touchdown, in which he ran the ball over the goal line after it hit a slant He looked at the sky. After his second goal, when he took a pinpoint throw from Love after striding through the end zone on a late-developing play, Weeks returned to the sideline and cried.
“Man, my heart was heavy that day, but I knew he was going to play me when I was there,” Weeks said. “It gave me motivation, an extra chip on my shoulder to go out and make big plays. To celebrate his birthday and get to the playoffs, it was a two-on-one game.”
On Sunday, Weeks not only provided for his late friend, first and foremost, but also for the Packers after they lost another key contributor to injury when Dobbs suffered a chest injury early in the game.
“When he went down, the other side was probably happy, but we have a lot of players who want to move up, as you can all see,” Weeks said. “Bo makes plays, J-Read makes a lot of plays, Malik Heath comes in and makes plays. Everyone can make plays. Everyone is capable. J-Love trusts us.”
The Packers compensated for Watson's recurring hamstring injuries, Dobbs' injury on Sunday that cost him most of the game and Reid and Wicks' late-season injuries. After all, rushing into action is nothing new for largely inexperienced recipients, yes, but it shows that they belong as adults, too. What's even more impressive is that they're doing so without a true veteran to show everyone the ropes, and the days of Davante Adams, Allen Lazard and Randall Cobb guiding the receiver room are over.
It's a credit to a few people within the organization for setting up the Packers' passing game for such success now and in the future. Passing game coordinator and receivers coach Jason Vrabel for preparing this young group for the bright lights, Matt LaFleur for doing the same, Gutekunst for rounding out the last two drafts at wide receiver, and Love for not only trusting this inexperience but also spreading the ball around. About while not having a true #1 receiver.
But above all, the broad recipients deserve recognition. Without such a dedicated star, as the Packers did in Adams, it fell to lesser-known men to carry it out. If their play is any indication of what's to come, they won't remain under the radar for much longer.
“I've definitely been part of teams where we've tried to force the player to pass the ball, and sometimes that doesn't work in your favor,” LaFleur said. “Other times, it happens. I think Jordan would tell you that he trusts whoever is out there. All those guys have proven to have games for us all season. Some big games last night and hopefully we can continue that.”
(Photo by Jayden Reed and Dontaveon Weeks: Patrick McDermott/Getty Images)
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