GREEN BAY – No elaborate speeches were required inside the Packers’ receiver room this week.
To a man, every wideout on the roster understood what needs to be done after seeing Christian Watson go down with a torn anterior cruciate ligament during Sunday’s regular-season finale against the Chicago Bears.
A 6-foot-4 receiver equipped with 4.3 speed, Watson has been a field-tilter for Green Bay since it drafted him in the second round out of North Dakota State in 2022.
More than just explosive plays and touchdowns, the 25-year-old wideout has established himself as a locker-room leader while taking ownership of one of the NFL’s youngest receiving corps.
As much as it hurts to press on without Watson, an unspoken rallying cry began among his peers leading into Sunday’s NFC Wild Card playoff game against the Philadelphia Eagles.
“He’s one of our leaders, he’s one of our brothers,” second-year receiver Malik Heath said. “Anytime anything like that happens, I feel like it happened to me too.”
Watson put an exhaustive amount of work into getting healthy again after a recurring hamstring injury derailed his 2023 season, even traveling down to UW-Madison earlier this year to do additional testing to get to the root of his soft-tissue issues.
It worked. He set career highs in both starts (15) and offensive snaps (555). A testament to his character, Watson also stayed patient when the ball wasn’t coming his way earlier this year.
In the end, Watson needed just 29 catches to produce 620 yards and two touchdowns for an astounding average of 21.4 yards per catch, the top mark by a Packers player with at least 25 catches since Hall of Famer James Lofton’s 22.0-yard average in 1984.
Although Watson sustained an injury to his other knee during Green Bay’s 34-0 shutout win over New Orleans in Week 16, he was back two weeks later to help overcome the absence of fellow third-year wideout Romeo Doubs (illness) against the Bears.
Watson played 10 snaps before crumbling to the ground while running a route during the opening minute of the second quarter. A pit quickly formed in the stomach of Green Bay’s receivers.
“Christian is our guy. We love Christian to death,” said receiver Bo Melton, who trained with Watson leading up to the 2022 NFL Draft. “To see that go down, it hurt me to my heart. Obviously, we gotta step up as a group but having Christian is…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at News…