The Green Bay Packers have been towards the bottom of the NFL in pass attempts for the past two seasons. Heading into 2026, I expect them to be more balanced on offense this season as Jordan Love continues to progress toward becoming one of the league’s elite quarterbacks. They have a young wide receiver room with pieces that have each flashed huge potential. I’m going to discuss one of those pieces in Christian Watson. Going into his fifth NFL season, his career has been filled with ups and downs. If he can finally put it all together, he might be the x-factor to finally get the Packers, and your fantasy football team, over the hump.
Can Christian Watson Shake The Injury-Prone Tag
So Close, Yet So Far Away
2025 was a tale of two seasons for the Green Bay Packers. The team was flying high after a shocking blockbuster trade just before Week 1 when they acquired All-Pro edge rusher Micah Parsons from Dallas. Through Week 12, they sat with a record of 7-3-1 and were positioned as a true Super Bowl contender. The wheels fell off from that point as they went on a five-game losing streak and lost Parsons to a torn ACL in Week 15. They still managed to secure an NFC Wild Card spot but had a quick playoff exit after losing to the division rival Bears in the first round.
The Packers have made the playoffs in six out of seven seasons under Head Coach Matt LaFleur since he took over in 2019. They appeared in the NFC Championship his first two seasons, but the team can’t get over the hump to becoming a championship team. Micah Parsons is expected to miss the first portion of the 2026 season, so they will have to rely more on the offense to keep them afloat.
Be sure to check our fantasy football preview of Christian Watson and the 2026 Packers!
Will the Real Christian Watson Please Stand Up?
Christian Watson was a raw prospect out of North Dakota State when the Packers drafted him early in the 2nd round of the 2022 draft. He established himself as a viable deep threat early in his career, but due to injuries and crowded receiver rooms, he’s never been a reliable fantasy option. In 2024, after another pedestrian season, he tore his ACL in Week 18. Even though Green Bay rewarded him with an $11 million, one-year bridge deal just before the 2025 season, his long-term future in Green Bay was highly in doubt at this point.
Coming off a major knee injury, 2025 drafters were hesitant to buy into Watson. Many questioned whether or not he would play at all in 2025, so he went mostly undrafted in redraft leagues. Watson saw his first action in Week 8, and the team decided to ease him in his first few weeks. He took off starting Week 11 and put up four Top-12 WR weeks over the remaining seven games.
Best YPRR vs. man coverage
[over the past five seasons combined, min. 200 routes]1. CeeDee Lamb – 3.67
2. A.J. Brown – 3.62
3. Puka Nacua – 3.40
4. Tyreek Hill – 3.34
5. George Pickens – 3.01
6. Jaxon Smith-Njigba – 2.93
7. Nico Collins – 2.92
8. Christian Watson – 2.83 pic.twitter.com/ZmvSgLAnVT— Fantasy Points Data (@FantasyPtsData) July 12, 2026
Watson’s full-season production doesn’t stand out since he missed nearly half the year, but he put up career-bests in several efficiency metrics such as first downs per route run, yards per route run, and yards per target. He ranked Top 10 in all three categories last season, and many top analysts correlate these measures to future fantasy output.
Christian Watson 2026 Fantasy Football Outlook
In addition to the late-season 2025 breakout, this offseason went well for Watson. Green Bay has been known to run four- or five-man wideout rotations under LaFleur, which has always capped their fantasy ceilings despite being in a great offensive environment. Two of the Top 3 target earners from last season (Romeo Doubs and Dontayvian Wicks) are on different teams now. On top of that, Watson signed a 4-year extension for $110 million, making him the highest-paid receiver in Green Bay by a decent margin.
The importance of Christian Watson on the Packers cannot be overstated- coming in 6th on most important player for the team:
The signal I get from the highlighted sentence is we might see higher route shares for Watson, Golden, and Reed than normal pic.twitter.com/g88aPwpryi
— Zain Dhanani (@DhananiZain) July 13, 2026
From Weeks 11-17 last season, Christian Watson ranked as the WR11 in fantasy football. He’s primed to play a large role on Green Bay’s offense in 2026. If he can finally stay healthy, there is no reason to believe he won’t blow his WR28 ADP completely out of the water as one of the great draft values this season.
Looking for your favorite team? This link will take you to the rest of our 2026 Look Inside team previews.
A Look Inside the Green Bay Packers
Editor’s Note: While this article focused on Christian Watson in fantasy football, we don’t want to leave you hanging on the rest of the team. Here is a quick look at the other fantasy-relevant Packers from Ryan Weisse.
Jordan Love
There seems to be a line between Jordan Love the QB and Jordan Love the fantasy QB. I can watch Love play and see he is a good NFL quarterback, but none of that is translating to much fantasy success. You can probably blame the Packers scheme for this a bit, but Love is a better Bryce Young right now. He was QB15 last year, and I expect about the same this season. HOWEVER, things could get interesting if Josh Jacobs is forced to miss time. It’s hard to lean on the running game if you have no star running back.
Josh Jacobs
In two years in Green Bay, Jacobs has scored 30 TDs. He was tailor-made for this offense, and we should be looking at him as a top-12 back again this year. However, there are some pretty disturbing allegations against Jacobs that could lead to a suspension. The NFL “justice” system tends to move slowly, and it may not affect Jacobs until 2027. Speaking only of Jacobs the football player, he is an RB2 with upside. But when you look at Jacobs the man, I see why many will be avoiding him this season.
MarShawn Lloyd
If the clouds of suspension were not hanging over Jacobs, we wouldn’t even be talking about Lloyd. He has been a perennial disappointment for his two years in the league, mainly due to injury. Believe it or not, Jonathon Brooks has more touches than Lloyd. They were in the same draft class, picked one round apart, and have eerily similar careers. Lloyd missed all of 2025 but appears healthy heading into 2026. The Packers have 125 vacated carries and may need to control Jacobs’ workload if the NFL doesn’t do that for them. There are worse picks than Lloyd at the end of your fantasy drafts.
Jayden Reed
Reed’s numbers have gotten worse every year he’s been in the league. I’m not saying he’s a bad football player; I’m just saying it raises questions.
Questions like”Is Jayden Reed a bad football player?”
All jokes aside, unless this offense changes drastically, a return to his rookie season is the absolute best we can hope for. He was a borderline top-24 WR that year, so if you are looking for WR2 upside, have at it.
Matthew Golden
It was a disappointing rookie year for Golden, which seems to have become a standard for Texas WRs coming into the NFL. There are two red flags here: He felt like a reach in the NFL Draft, and he was disappointing as a rookie. That’s enough for me to let Golden be someone else’s headache come fantasy drafts.
Tucker Kraft
For an offense that has no WR1, Kraft sure looked the part last season before his injury. In eight games, he had 32 catches, 489 yards, and six TDs. We can double that to guess his pace, and Kraft would have been the TE2 last year. He’s not Bowers or McBride, but he belongs in the Warren and Loveland conversation.
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Before you go, check out where Christian Watson and the rest of the Packers fall in our 2026 Fantasy Rankings here!