Acme Packing Company
Davante Adams could be the best short-term free agent on the market
When we asked the fans a little over a week ago what the biggest need was for the Green Bay Packers this offseason, the results were as follows, in order: cornerback, defensive end, receiver and defensive tackle. Now that we’ve already previewed the cornerback, defensive end and defensive tackle class, it’s time to turn our attention to the final position in our preview series: receiver.
The Packers have a strong core of receivers in their room, but the loss of Christian Watson for at least three-quarters of the 2025 regular season puts them in a bad spot. Based on how their receivers were used in 2023 and 2024, it’s doubtful that any combination of Jayden Reed, Dontayvion Wicks or Romeo Doubs will threaten opposing defenses in the deeper portion of the field in the same way that Watson did before his injury. On top of that, Doubs and Watson are going into contract seasons, meaning the team will need to decide soon whether to double down on their investments or elect to let them play out their rookie deals before hitting free agency themselves.
As we did with the other positions we’ve previewed, we’re going to take a look at the Packers’ receivers and the receivers who could be available this offseason. We’ll take a two-year snapshot of how these receivers have performed in a key metric. For this exercise, we’re going to use adjusted yards per route run and compare them to the league average.
Adjusted yards treat touchdowns as a 20-yard bonus. According to NFL Pro, 91 receivers have run at least as many routes as the Packers’ top four wide receivers since 2023. We’re going to label those players as “qualifiers.” Among qualifiers, the league-wide adjusted yards per route ran over the last two years, by wide receivers, is 1.97 yards. From there, we can compare how valuable receivers have been to the league average.
I want you to look at the chart below. It shows the distribution of all qualifying receivers in this metric. The bar highlighted is Jayden Reed. If you were truly doubting whether Reed is the 11th-best receiver in the league, the bar chart helps explain it.
While Reed might be 11th, the difference between the 9th-best receiver in this metric and the 11th-best receiver in this metric is roughly as wide as the gap between the 9th receiver in this metric and the league average. This is all to say: The NFL is really dominated by just nine receivers.
The players who rank ahead of Reed are Tyreek Hill, Nico Collins, A.J. Brown, CeeDee Lamb, Amon-Ra St. Brown, Justin Jefferson, Puka Nacua, Mike Evans, Ja’Marr Chase and Brandon Aiyuk, the usual suspects. Fellow Packers, Christian Watson, Dontayvion Wicks and Romeo...
