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Christian Watson and the other Packers rookie receivers, Romeo Doubs and Samori Toure, have heard plenty from Aaron Rodgers over the six months or so since they were drafted.
So what they got from their quarterback Sunday must have been music to their ears.
“Shoot, he told everybody just how proud he is of all of us,” Watson said over the phone from the bowels of Lambeau Field after Green Bay’s 31–28 win over the Cowboys in overtime. “And that just going forward, we’re going to look like a different football team. I think that we’ve put in the work, we decided to go out there and show it, and I think that today was only the beginning for us.”
If that’s true, and Sunday’s win was a turning point for Green Bay’s offense, then the plan the Packers had all along is actually working. The whole idea here was to get a high-ceiling draft class of receivers multiple reps, with the feeling being they’d wind up being better in the long run than an experienced also-ran from another team.
And maybe that process was always going to be bumpy at first. Doubs (fourth round) got a lot of work early, with Watson battling injuries, and flashed first. Toure, the lowest (by far) draft pick (seventh round) of the three, just started playing over the past three weeks and saw his play-time uptick a little more last week after Doubs went down.
But as Watson showed Sunday, the payoff could be huge. While the 6'5", 207-pounder—taken 34th in April and widely seen as a talented, unpolished ball of athletic clay—has flashed early in his rookie year, earning Rodgers’s trust has been a process (as it has for Doubs and Toure), and it sure looks Watson’s got it now. That he finished with 107 yards and three touchdowns on four catches against the Cowboys is a good barometer.
What might be even more meaningful is when those scores came—all three with the Packers trailing in the game, including two in the fourth quarter. And if you listen to Watson describe them, you can hear how he’s adapting to playing in the NFL.
• The first was a 58-yarder on the back end of the second quarter. On the surface, it looked like a simple go ball on a third-and-1, with Watson getting position on Anthony Brown. But there was a little more nuance to it.
“It was just a straight-up go route on my side,” Watson said. “I knew that if they were going to play with that one-high safety away that I was an option there, and 12 [Rodgers] told me before the play the same thing. So I already kind of knew what to expect. The defender was playing a little flat-footed; so I know I just have to win off the line, and get outside, and then just look up and catch the ball. I knew right off the line that there was a big possibility for that to come my way and obviously I went off the line, and the rest is history.”
• The second came with the Packers trailing 28–14, on a fourth-and-7 at the Dallas 39 with just under 14 minutes left. Watson, running a crosser, got past nickel corner DaRon Bland, which is where Rodgers found him.
“That was a play that we called a few times throughout the game,” Watson said. “We really liked that route specifically, with the way they were playing with their one-high look, their man looks. We knew if we were going to get matched with that one-high, all I had to do was break a flat and get open. It was obviously the look we wanted, and I had to kind of adjust a little bit off the release.
“He [Bland] was playing a little bit more inside than I thought he was going to, so I broke outside of him and then just flattened off at the top of the route and obviously 12 just put it in the right spot and it worked out.”
• The third came on first-and-goal from the 7, with the Packers still down 28–21, and less than three minutes to go. At that point, it was pretty clear to everyone that Watson would be in play in the red zone.
“The third one was a play we were trying to get to a few times throughout the night; it was obviously a play we really wanted to get to in that red zone area,” Watson said. “We were just waiting for the right look. And on that specific one, we finally got the look that we were wanting. And I just knew with the low safety to the left, the other safety kind of scooted over to our right side. Then all I had to do was when the crossing space was beat, I just ran.”
And from there, Watson did a counting celebration with his fingers: One, two, three …
“Shoot, there wasn’t much going through my head except just pure joy, pure happiness,” Watson said. “Obviously that one tied it up, just giving us a chance to stay in the ballgame. And after the fact, the job wasn’t finished, and we still had more to do. But in that moment just to be able to keep us in that game and have that successful drive was huge.
Maybe, combined with a healthy Doubs, it’ll be huge going forward for the Packers, too.
What’s clear is these guys are taking steps that could lead to a very different second half of the year in Green Bay. And just as they’re getting to know Rodgers, he’s getting to know them, too.
“With 12, I really think it’s just come down to him just letting me be me and then doing his part, putting the ball in the right spot,” Watson said. “I think that for me, it’s just being able to go out there and play as fast as I can and play as free as I can. Obviously just hearing from him and everybody around me, it’s just going out there and playing fast. That’s been huge for me, because obviously it’s a high-level game playing in the National Football League.
“There’s a lot of things to think about. But obviously the more things you think about, the slower you’re playing out there. So obviously just getting things down, spending the extra time in the film room, extra meeting time with the quarterbacks, it’s just been huge for me.”
And as we said, it could be big for the Packers, too.
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