How Does the Health of Green Bay’s Wide Receiver Corps Depend On Jayden Reed?

In October, Jayden Reed hopped on the St. Brown brothers’ podcast to talk some football. As NFC North rivals, some trash talk was inevitable. Former Green Bay Packers receiver Equanimeous St. Brown, who’s with the New Orleans Saints, didn’t have a ton to say. But his brother, Amon-Ra, is not only a cornerstone piece of the new-look Detroit Lions but has made his disdain for Green Bay abundantly clear. Their very first matchup did not go well for Reed’s squad. In a game characterized by horrendous weather, the Packers failed even to make it competitive.

“Wait,” Reed told them, “until I come to Detroit.”

Unfortunately, last Thursday’s loss in Detroit stung even worse. For Green Bay, it was a statement that they could compete with anyone. They showed grit, toughness, and offensive explosiveness. Jordan Love, Josh Jacobs, and Tucker Kraft dominated.

However, Reed turned in a Tony Snell zero-catch, zero-yard stat line despite consistently filling the box score as one of Matt LaFleur’s most important weapons.

The loss was a setback in that it all but eliminated the Packers from contention for the NFC North crown. After years of divisional dominance, seeing another franchise rise from the depths to seize their second consecutive title and attain juggernaut status in the conference has been jarring.

That has turned all of Green Bay’s attention to the Wild Card race.

Either Detroit or the Philadelphia Eagles will earn a first-round bye. The other will host the seventh seed. LaFleur’s mission over the remaining four games is not to be that team. The Packers will encounter one or both of the conference elite in any Super Bowl path. Still, it would be a lot easier to avoid them in Round 1, to say the least. Reed is the offense’s most dynamic player and would be an integral part of any Super Bowl path.

The Packers offense, particularly its receiving core, has been characterized by having a new No. 1 virtually every week. Reed, Christian Watson, Romeo Doubs, Dontayvion Wicks, and Kraft have no shortage of talent on the outside, and each of them has proven their ability to take over a football game when necessary. However, a drawback of that offensive structure is that it creates games like last Thursday’s, in which your most electric downfield and lateral threat never touches the ball.

Their new objective makes Sunday night’s primetime showdown a crucial contest. The Seattle Seahawks are a likely playoff team and could be Green Bay’s road adversary if they take care of business and secure the fifth or sixth seed. The positive there would be avoiding Detroit and Philadelphia. The negative would be that some kind of preposterousness always seems to go down when the Packers lace ‘em up in the Pacific Northwest.

The offensive game plan should be simple in spirit: get the ball in the hands of your most important players in spots they can do damage. That means getting Jacobs heavily involved, using Kraft between the hashes and in the red zone, taking downfield shots to Watson, and, crucially, getting the ball rolling with manufactured touches to Reed.

Reed can burn a defense anywhere on the field using anything from jet sweeps to go routes. Like Kyle Shanahan did Thursday night with Deebo Samuel, LaFleur should look to get Reed going with heavy involvement in the offense’s scripted first 15 plays to open the game. The difference, I would expect, is that Reed has shown a greater ability to seize his opportunities this season than Samuel.

There’s also a larger factor at play here. Reed, Watson, Doubs, Wicks, and Kraft have done an admirable job maintaining camaraderie, playing unselfish football, and contributing to winning. It’s admirable, but it’s also rare in today’s game. All around the league, wide receivers who don’t touch the ball are increasingly vocal about it.

Ja’Marr Chase is one, CeeDee Lamb is another, and even A.J. Brown, whose team has won their last nine games, refuses to take a day off from complaining when others shoulder the load. They’re a problem in contract negotiations, and they’re even acting like divas as rookies now — just look at Brandon Aiyuk. Malik Nabers is Exhibit A. I won’t let myself get too far down the George Pickens rabbit hole, but it says incredible things about his talent that Mike Tomlin chooses to deal with him.

By all accounts, Reed is a respectable person in addition to being a highly talented football player. But as we can see with all the names I listed above, that doesn’t necessarily mean problems won’t emerge. We have already seen the first fissure in Green Bay’s WR room when Doubs, who came across as the most docile, level-headed guy, skipped practice to protest his involvement in the team’s game plan.

In true Packers fashion, Brian Gutekunst and the front office nipped that in the bud, and Doubs was swiftly back with the team. But it’s a new era, and as these guys start to reach the end of their rookie contracts, the pushing and shoving will likely begin. All of this is to say that Reed isn’t a player that Green Bay wants to have contemplating his long-term fit in the offense. Ahead of a decisive December contest, LaFleur must get the ball in No. 11’s hands.