It’s been over a month — Week 13 against the Kansas City Chiefs, to be exact — since the Green Bay Packers have had their top four receivers on the field together due to injuries. However, for a pivotal Week 18 matchup with the Chicago Bears, the receiver room appears to be getting fully healthy.
“It would be huge,” said Jordan Love about having a healthy group of receivers. “Trying to have everybody as healthy as possible and have those guys up. Like I said, it would be very big to get all those guys back and all our weapons, and it would just be a nice help.”
Christian Watson has missed the last four games dealing with a hamstring injury. Jayden Reed and Dontayvion Wicks have both missed time as well recently due to injuries of their own. Reed did not play against the Carolina Panthers and then exited the Minnesota Vikings game early with a chest injury. Wicks would leave the Carolina game with an injury and then not play against Minnesota.
All three seem to be heading in the right direction this week, with each on the practice field on Wednesday in a limited capacity. After getting chest X-rays following the Vikings’ game, Reed said everything checked out fine. He is still taking things day-by-day but says he feels “pretty good.”
For Watson, he was happy to be back on the practice field, and feels confident about where he’s currently at putting him in a position to play on Sunday.
“My passion is playing football,” said Watson, “and now it’s looking a lot like I’m going to be able to play some football this Sunday. I’m in a really good spot.”
Despite the rotating door at receiver over the last month, the Packers offense has continued to hum along, including back-to-back performances of 30-plus points. In part, that’s due to the depth that has been developed at the position, with the emergence of Malik Heath and more recently Bo Melton over the course of the season. There is also the stability that Romeo Doubs has provided, but it’s also a reflection of Love’s play and just how good he has been.
Since Week 11, regardless of what the injury situation has looked like for the offense, Love is completing 68.4 percent of his passes, throwing for 1,842 yards with 16 touchdowns to one interception—ranking in the top-5 among all quarterbacks during that span in each of those categories.
“I think that’s something we’ve been working on all season,” said Love. “Just building that chemistry throughout training camp. That’s all a credit to everyone else who has stepped up. They’ve been in the book. They know exactly what they need to be doing when they get out on the field. We’re not having those mistakes that were happening early on in the season. It’s a credit to everyone around me.”
Along with potentially having their top four receivers available, this will potentially be the first time all season that the Packers have had this iteration of the receiver room together. In Week 13 against the Chiefs, Bo Melton was not elevated or contributing like he has been as he was still on the practice squad for that game.
On top of that, Aaron Jones is healthy and coming off a pair of 120-plus rushing yard performances, while Luke Musgrave continues to practice in a limited fashion as he works his way back from IR. It’s possible, that for the first time since Week 10, Green Bay could have each of their preferred starters from the skill position groups on offense all on the field together. And this current version of the Packers’ offense is in a much different place, from both a depth and execution standpoint, than where they were at when playing Pittsburgh.
While Green Bay is surging – and getting healthy – on offense, the Bears are doing the same on defense. Chicago is 5-2 in their last seven games. All season long, this has been one of the better run defense units in football, while in the last five games, they’ve allowed the lowest opponent passer rating during that stretch, and just 15.6 points per game. Chicago also ranks first total interceptions this season.
“It looks like a group that has played 16 games together,” said Matt LaFleur. “If you look at their roster, for the most part, most of those guys are healthy and they’ve played a lot of ball together and they’ve grown together and you can see it—it’s evident. This is a very well coached football team with very good players. It’s a very sound scheme. They do a great job of reading the quarterback. Reading his eyes. They’re stout against the run. It’s a great challenge.”
Sunday’s matchup with Chicago will be a challenge as LaFleur mentioned, especially with the Bears having the opportunity to play spoiler. But part of the battle over the course of the long NFL season is for a team to be peaking at the right time, and the Green Bay offense seems to be doing that, along with getting healthy.