Tucker Kraft is lost for the 2025 season, and Green Bay Packers fans are still in mourning. But in the aftermath, will we finally see a Luke Musgrave emergence? It’s an intriguing question, and it’s going to be fun to find out the answer over the back half of the schedule.
Following Kraft’s freak knee injury Sunday in the team’s ugly 16-13 home loss to the Carolina Panthers, Musgrave caught three Jordan Love passes for 34 yards, including one catch and run that helped set up the Packers’ lone touchdown drive.
That said, the oft-injured Musgrave has just a 9-88-0 line on 10 targets through the team’s first eight games of the 2025 season. Musgrave sightings have been rare in the shadow of Kraft, who emerged as one of the best tight ends in the league heading into week 9.
For the season, the 2023 third-round draft pick Kraft had looked nearly unstoppable in amassing 32 receptions, 489 yards and 6 touchdowns. He averaged – averaged – 10.8 yards after the catch, per Pro Football Focus, and Love had a ridiculous 157.2 passer rating when targeting Kraft. He’s not going to be easy to replace, and no reasonable observer should expect any one player to do so. Head Coach Matt LaFleur said precisely that this week.
But it does offer a tantalizing opportunity for the Packers’ No. 2 tight end to finally shine.
Coming out of his college career at Oregon State, Musgrave earned a 9.95 Relative Athletic Score. He was a second-round pick for a reason, folks. And heck, he was drafted one round ahead of Kraft, so clearly the Packers were sold on the promise he offered.
Musgrave’s measurables are, in a word, ridiculous. He’s a six-foot-five, 253-pound gazelle, as tight ends go. He earned an elite grade in his level of explosiveness. He has all the tools of a down-the-seam monster.
The main drawback is, thanks in part to his injuries and the emergence of Kraft, we simply haven’t seen more than flashes at the NFL level.
For his part, Musgrave, while he isn’t openly predicting a breakout, sounds confident and ready to go to work.
“I'm focused on how I show up on film, that I'm playing with good energy, good effort,” he told the media this week when discussing his three receptions Sunday following Kraft’s injury. "I always prepare like I'm going to play in a full capacity, so my preparation is going to be the same."
"But I think that we're all confident in what Luke brings to the offense,” Packers wide receiver Christian Watson said of his teammate this week. “I'm excited to see him get a little bit of spotlight again."
All that said, if a breakout is imminent, it may not be in the offing this week. No tight end has gone for more than 61 yards – and that was savvy veteran Travis Kelce (yes, Taylor Swift’s fiance) – against the Eagles this season. Sledding is likely going to be tough for the Packers’ offense on Monday night.
Musgrave is not Tucker Kraft; he’s not a yards-after-the-catch monster like his teammate, and in all honesty, it sometimes seems like Musgrave goes down too easily when hit.
But what we would all like to see from No. 88 is to offer Love a trustworthy set of hands and the ability to get open down the field. Let’s hope he might develop into a reliable third-down option to take some of the heat off of Romeo Doubs in must-have scenarios.
Musgrave has the hands, size and speed to do all of the above, and mismatch opportunities against linebackers and safeties should be plentiful down the stretch, especially when Jayden Reed returns to the lineup.
Let’s see if, with an extended look in the lineup, Musgrave can – in the words of LaFleur two years ago – “stay on his feet.”