(Photo: Jordan Scruggs, 247Sports)
The NFL draft is behind us, and we are now officially entering the dreaded dead zone. It's a tough time for die-hard fans, but it also allows you to do some housekeeping that you generally don't have time for during the season.
This is a unique offseason for the Packers after hosting the draft in Green Bay and then breaking a 22-year streak of not drafting a 1st round wide receiver. While it may technically be the dead zone, I think a lot of Packers fans are still riding the high of the Matthew Golden pick.
Now the question is, how will we use him? How will we use all of our wide receivers? There isn't another team in the NFL that goes six or seven deep like the Packers. They need a plan for all of these guys. Especially someone like rookie Savion Williams who has such a unique skillset.
Today, I'm going to go through the entire wide receiver room and predict how Matt Lafleur and his staff are going to deploy all these weapons. (I will not be including Christian Watson here because he'll likely miss most of the 2025 season, sigh).
Let's start with the guys we already know, and then we'll work our way to the rookies.
Romeo Doubs
Romeo Doubs may not be the flashiest wide receiver in the league, but he's still a very solid player who clearly has the trust of Jordan Love. Seems like every time the Packers needed a 3rd down conversion, Love would look Doubs' way. No wide receiver on the team played more snaps out wide than him in 2024, and I don't expect that to change in 2025.
A massive part of Doubs' game is beating cornerbacks on some vicious slant routes. Even without being overly twitched up for a receiver, Doubs still manages to create a ton of separation on in-breaking routes. Another underrated aspect of his game is his ability to win deep down the sideline and make contested catches. Last year, he led the team in contested catches with 12. It would be foolish to move him from that outside spot.
Things get a little more complicated from here on out.
Jayden Reed
It's been an interesting week for Jayden Reed after a report came out that his agent had a conversation with Brian Gutekunst about where Reed stands after drafting two receivers this year. This is classic dead zone news that I'm not overly concerned about.
That being said, Reed wants to make sure he's still an integral part of the Packers' offensive game plan, and I think I speak for all fans when I say I hope so. There were some rough moments last year, but overall, I think Reed is the most talented receiver on the team. Even as a smaller guy, he can go up and beat a defensive back at the catch point. Last year he caught 9 of 13 contested catch opportunities. You don't see many slot guys do that.
Notice how I called him a slot guy? For some reason it seems like a large faction of Packers fans still want to see Reed used on the outside and I just don't get it. Yes, he can win down field but everything from his size, speed, and run after catch ability screams slot receiver.
Can he do some nice things on the outside? Sure. That still doesn't mean it should be his primary role. Put him in the slot and force safeties and linebackers to try and cover him.
Dontayvion Wicks
This is where things get interesting. Going into last year, a large portion of Packers fans, me included, thought Wicks would emerge as the Jordan Love's go-to target. Unfortunately, that is not what happened.
Instead, Wicks led all NFL wide receivers in drop rate at 18%. What's potentially even worse was his contested catch success, or lack thereof. Wicks had the second-most contested catch opportunities on the team last year with 16. He caught four of those passes. That is a 25% contested catch rate, which was the worst on the team… By a lot.
All of this is sounding pretty bad, and yet I still have a ton of confidence in his ability to turn things around. He is such a talented route runner and can do some special things with the ball in his hands after the catch. It's the catching part he needs to work on.
If you remember Davante Adams' second NFL season, then you'll know that drops are fixable. Davante had a drop rate of 15.6% in 2015. Not as bad as Wicks was but still pretty awful. I'm not saying that Wicks will turn into Davante, but we've seen guys with bad cases of the drops turn it around before and I don't see any reason why Wicks can't do the same.
Last year he was the only Packers wide receiver to play 100+ snaps in the slot and on the outside. With the addition of Matthew Golden, I'd expect to see Wicks play from the slot even more than last year, which is something I'm very excited about. Most of his best work has come from the slot through two years of football.
Matthew Golden
The Packers actually did it. After 22 years, they drafted a 1st round wide receiver, and I'm still in shock. I had completely moved on from the possibility of them drafting a 1st round wide receiver years ago, and I couldn't be happier to finally be proven wrong.
Going into this year's draft, all I wanted to see was them add a true deep threat, regardless of what round they did it in. The fact that they went out and got arguably the best deep ball guy in the class makes it that much sweeter.
Golden averaged 17 yards per reception in 2024 and caught 11 out of 18 contested catch opportunities. Excluding Christian Watson, no Packers receiver averaged more than 15.3 yards per reception last season. There was a clear lack of deep speed on this roster. That is not the case anymore.
No wide receiver ran a faster 40-yard dash than Golden's blazing 4.29 performance. That is the kind of speed a defense must respect. It's the kind of speed that makes an impact even when the ball isn't going his way. We saw this a lot with Marquez Valdes-Scantling. He would rarely finish a game with more than three or four receptions, but you would always feel his absence when he missed a game, because things got much harder for Davante Adams. When a defense doesn't have to worry about being beat deep, it becomes much more difficult to run an effective offense.
I expect Golden to be used primarily on the outside and deep down the field, especially as he gets acclimated to the NFL. Once he becomes more comfortable, I think the sky's the limit for how he will be utilized in this offense.
Savion Williams
Now we get to the fun stuff. Savion Williams shouldn't even have "WR" next to his name. Just use the "W" for weapon. This guy is absolutely electric with the ball in his hands. Whether he's catching it, running it, or even throwing it, he's a human highlight reel.
Last year, Williams caught 60 passes, ran the ball 51 times, and threw the ball three more times, one of them going for a touchdown. Even before he became a Packer, he was my favorite player in this year's class, just based on how much fun he was to watch.
In a five-play span, you'll see him leap over defenders for a deep reception, catch a screen pass, run the ball out of wildcat formation, and then drop what looked like his easiest catch of the day. That's what makes him fun and also difficult to figure out.
When you draft a guy like this, it's imperative that you have a plan for him. We see too many "gadget" guys come out of college and fail in the NFL because teams don't know how to use them. I am not worried about that in this case. Everything we've heard from the Packers has made it clear that getting Williams was a priority, even after drafting Golden in the 1st round. You don't draft a second top 100 wide receiver if you don't know how you want to use him.
If I was running the offense I'd start with simply getting the ball in his hands in any way I can. Give him screen passes, jet sweeps, wildcat runs, I don't care, just get him the ball. The hope is that over time he can play a more traditional wide receiver role, but with such a deep receiver room you don't have to force that from day one.
Lastly, it shouldn't happen more than a few times a year, but they absolutely have to let him throw the ball on occasion. There are very few plays more difficult to defend than when a ball carrier all of a sudden can launch the ball down field. Don't waste that advantage.