Acme Packing Company
I’ve already seen so much online analysis of the Green Bay Packers’ contract extension with Christian Watson that basically boils down to “duhhhh BIG NUMBER, MAN HURT, NEVER HIT 700 YARDS, MAYBE I DOWN MY LOW T MEDS BEFORE CALLING DIVORCE ATTORNEY AND SNEAKING IN NINE HOLES.” And just, no. It’s not that much money, Watson is a very good receiver as is, and his remaining upside is as high as any receiver in the league.
First, this basically adds up to a five-year, $116 million contract with a ton of flexibility baked in. You can read all about the financials from smarter people than I here. And I’m not here to discuss financials, I’m here to tell you about Christian Watson the player, maybe the league’s most underrated dominant force.
You may not believe that to be true and I get it because the individual members of the Packer passing game operate mostly in secret due to their comically (and I would argue harmfully) slow pace, which keeps everyone but Josh Jacobs and Tucker Kraft off fantasy radars. The one actual knock on Watson is his injury history, and so the combination of lack of availability and the slowest offense in the league depresses both his (and everyone else’s) individual game stats, and his cumulative stats. And maybe he’ll get hurt again and this will all be a huge waste of money, but injuries are just a fact of football life; but hey, maybe he won’t! And if not, well, on a per-play basis, basically no one is better than Watson. Really!
Over the past two seasons (min:100 targets), Watson is second only to Alec Pierce in Yards per Target (Tucker Kraft is fifth). Y/T is the best simple statistic for evaluating receivers because, unlike yards per completion, it includes the balls that were intended for the receiver but not caught. You may be skeptical though, because Alec Pierce, while a fine deep receiver, isn’t THAT good, and you’re right, we can do a bit better. Exiting the simple stats, we have Yards per Route Run, which also factors in a receiver’s ability to draw targets when he’s out there. Alec Pierce ranks 16th with 2.10 Y/RR, while Watson is still solidly in the top 10 at 2.28, just behind Drake London and Bears rookie Luther Burden.
But we can do even better with Defense-adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA), FTN’s proprietary efficiency statistic that also adjusts for the quality of opposition faced. There, Watson finished second in 2025 at 35.7% over average, beating out Puka Nacua, JSN, and a host of other awesome receivers. (Note: On the FTN website he’s first, but per Aaron Schatz, he is actually second. Either way, this is really splitting hairs, and Watson has been awesome! During the offseason there are tweaks and refinements to such databases.)
FTN also has a useful statistic that rewards both volume and efficiency called Defense-adjusted Yards Above Replacement (DYAR), expressed in terms of yards instead of a percentage...
