GREEN BAY, Wis. – The Green Bay Packers have an incredibly deep receiver room. Injuries, however, have been the equivalent of an oak tree falling on the side of the swimming pool.
On Tuesday at Packers training camp, rookie Savion Williams dropped out early in practice and veteran Romeo Doubs was injured late in practice following a collision with Evan Williams.
Five of Green Bay’s top seven receivers are out of commission, with Doubs and Williams joining Christian Watson (knee), Dontayvion Wicks (calf) and Jayden Reed (foot).
The injury to Doubs briefly stopped practice, with Watson, Wicks and Reed among those who went to check on him. Doubs eventually was helped off the field and, ultimately, walked into the Don Hutson Center. While Doubs missed time twice last season with concussion, this injury appeared to be to his back.
On the play, Malik Willis fired a deep ball to Doubs, who was streaking up the right side. Safety Evan Williams closed on the play and pulled up at the last moment but couldn’t completely avoid the collision.
“Definitely, it wasn’t malicious at all,” Williams said. “I didn’t want to hit him whatsoever. You get any receiver in a bad position like that where he’s playing the ball, you don’t want to (hit him) or you try not to knock him off-balance. I got a good break on the ball, so I’m kind of running under it and judging the ball, seeing where he’s at, and I’m in a pretty good spot to where if he caught it, I would’ve hit him if it was a game.
“And so I start to pull off and then he bobbles it, so he kind of hits it forward and I’m kind of running to get the ball and I think I maybe knocked him off-balance a little bit. Again, unintentional. I hope he’s all right. That’s a guy that we’re definitely going to need this season.”
In the moment, it didn’t look like much of a hit.
“Me, either,” Williams said. “I thought I did an all right job of trying to lay off. But sometimes it’s hard for a receiver. You’re trying to judge a ball, trying to feel where this defender is, you’ve got a post safety coming at you, and then you drop the ball and you’re already running full speed, and anything can knock you off-balance. I don’t really know what happened.”
Doubs, who has had a spectacular training camp, walked slowly into the locker room but did not talk to reporters.
With Watson likely to start the regular season on the physically unable to perform list, the projected top five receivers are Doubs, Reed, Wicks and rookies Matthew Golden and Williams, who had a massage gun on his hamstring.
Only Golden completed practice on Tuesday, with the team headed into a key stretch with a joint practice against the Colts on Thursday, a preseason game in Indianapolis on Saturday and a joint practice and game against the Seahawks next week to wrap up training camp.
That puts the pressure on the young receivers, such as Julian Hicks, who spent his entire rookie season on the practice squad.
“Just trying to keep working, keep grinding,” Hicks said. “We’re down a couple guys but that next man up. Guys got to step up and make plays and be ready to go.”
The last men standing among the veterans are Malik Heath, a backup during his first two seasons, and Mecole Hardman, a free agent trying to jump-start his career.
The depth chart is rounded out by Cornelius Johnson, who spent last year on the practice squad, Will Sheppard, who was signed just before training camp, and Isaiah Neyor, who was signed during training camp.
Neyor, who made a tremendous touchdown catch, will get an extended look. He signed with the team on Aug. 6 and has been learning the plays on the fly.
“I don’t know the entire playbook,” he said, “but I know exactly what they want me to know, so I’ve been dialed into the playbook every single day and, day-by-day, I’m starting to understand it more and more. So, it’s something similar to what I’ve ran in the past. I just got to get used to all the different wordings and things like that.”
With neither Heath nor Hardman having seized control of a potential sixth receiver spot on the roster, one player’s pain – or multiple players’ pain – could be someone’s gain.
“Everybody just to put their best foot forward,” Hicks said of what’s next. “We need everybody onboard. We need people to make plays and we need people to know the playbook. Everybody’s got to be on top of their sh**. I know that’s what they’re going to expect out of us – no drop-off. Just continue to work.”
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— Bill Huber (@BillHuberNFL) August 12, 2025