Everyone wants to know who this year’s Puka Nacua is. But folks need to understand how insanely rare his fantasy football season was. Not only did he have the greatest rookie fantasy season of all time, he did it as a fifth-round pick. We’ve broken down the Hit Rates for Late Round Wide Receivers extensively and, spoiler alert, they are pretty atrocious.

If your plan is to find a Day Three rookie who is going undrafted in fantasy football that will finish as a top five wide receiver, you might be setting yourself up for disappointment. It’s a bit more realistic to look for someone like this year’s Nico Collins. 

Collins was a Day Two NFL Draft pick who struggled with injuries for a couple of years. Then, in year three, when he was being ranked in the WR4-5 range in fantasy football rankings, he blew up and had a WR1 season. That feels a bit more doable, right? And I think I might have found just the guy – Christian Watson.

 

 

 

Christian Watson’s Talent

The Green Bay Packers took a risk in drafting Christian Watson with the second pick of the second round in the 2022 NFL Draft – there’s no doubt about that. On paper, he is an insane physical specimen at 6’4” running a 4.36 40-yard dash at the combine, which PlayerProfiler lists as 96th percentile speed and 97th percentile catch radius. Here’s a look at his physical measurements from their database:

Over two years now, he’s only appeared in 23 games, but he’s flashed that upside with multiple 60+ yard plays and multiple rushing touchdowns. The 14 career touchdowns scored by Watson actually leads all wide receivers from his draft class – a class which includes names like Garrett Wilson, Drake London and Chris Olave. 

Last year, when healthy, he led the Packers in box score stats like snaps, targets, yards and touchdowns. The underlying metrics were promising as well as our friend Derek Brown of FantasyPros has pointed out:

Watson was really catching stride down the stretch last year in Weeks 11, 12 and 13 when he posted PPR weeks of 10.2, 20.4 and 27.6 points. Unfortunately, in that Week 13 game, he re-aggravated a hamstring injury, which ended his regular season right then and there.

 

 

 

Can He Stay Healthy?

This has been the biggest issue for Christian Watson, both in fantasy and a real-life perspective. The 2022 knee injury and concussion don’t carry much concern of reinjury for us. It’s the recurring hamstring issues that are problematic. 

He missed Weeks 6 and 7 of 2022 with a grade 1 hamstring pull. He then missed the first three games of 2023 with another grade 2 hamstring strain. And then he reinjured the hamstring in December of 2023 and missed the remainder of the regular season from Week 13 on. He appeared in both playoff games but on a limited basis where he was clearly not healthy. Soft tissue injuries like these not only linger, but there’s data that shows that players who suffer multiple similar soft tissue injuries are prone to similar future injuries.

Now, there is reason to have some hope. Watson has been proactive about this issue, first spending tens of thousands of dollars of his own money on treatments and then, this NFL offseason, joining a hamstring study at the University of Wisconsin. The study is actually part of a $4 million grant from the NFL to study hamstring issues specifically and ways to treat and prevent similar recurring injuries.

According to Watson, the group of doctors found a large imbalance between the size of both of his legs. They used a special device called a NordBord to measure muscle symmetries and found that one of Watson’s legs was 20% larger than the other. Per the group, perfect symmetry is nearly impossible, but the goal for Watson is to get his legs down to within 6% of each other. 

On the last update in May, they reported he was already down to 8-10%. If these techniques work, they will not only be beneficial for Watson, but revolutionary for athletes around the world who have dealt with recurring soft tissue injuries.

 

 

 

Stats & Opportunity

There has been a lot of steam this offseason for Dontayvion Wicks. And that might not be unwarranted as he did an admirable job filling in for Watson whenever he missed time. Wicks didn’t crack 100 yards at any point but he did have two games with 90+ yards and another with 61. The underlying numbers for Wicks were promising as well as he showed a rock solid 1.94 yards per route run and forced 9 missed tackles, which actually led the Packers receiver group.

The reality though is that, when everyone was healthy, Christian Watson and Romeo Doubs were the starters on the outside with Jayden Reed in the slot. Dontayvion Wicks was the “next man up”. Here is some data from Adam Levitan at Establish The Run showing the rates at which each player played in two-WR and three-WR sets when everyone was healthy:

That was the case both when Watson returned in Week 4 and again for the playoffs. When Watson returned, the snaps came from Wicks. In fact, the Packers essentially had Wicks as an understudy for Watson, Malik Heath as a direct backup for Jayden Reed (the two games Heath played his most snaps were Weeks 16 and 17 when Reed was banged up) and Bo Melton as the backup for Romeo Doubs (Melton played 75% of the snaps in the one game Doubs left with a chest injury).

With the limited access we have as NFL fans, it’s easy for us to forget that these jobs are not often won based on a small sample size of yards per route run on Sunday. They are won with the thousands of reps of practice that these players put in with the coaches. The couple hours we see on Sunday is the end result of that work, not the beginning of the evaluation.

And, as much as I like the idea of stashing guys like Dontayvion Wicks and Tucker Kraft in dynasty for the day when it comes for Green Bay to pay everyone, I’m not sure they’ve done enough to overthrow the starters at their position. In the case of Wicks, I think the argument might be better that he starts over Romeo Doubs than supplant Christian Watson – that is, if he were to start at all.

 

 

 

Christian Watson Fantasy ADP 2024

Texans wide receiver Nico Collins spent his first two years in the NFL struggling with injuries, never cracking 500 yards and only scoring three total touchdowns. That led him to come off the board at WR56 in PPR drafts last year. As we all witnessed, he blew up as the top option for quarterback C.J. Stroud and finished as a WR1 in fantasy football, despite missing a couple of games again. Collins was rewarded with a three year, $70+ million deal this offseason.

This year, Christian Watson’s fantasy outlook sees him going off the board as the WR41 on average in fantasy drafts. Like Nico Collins, he has the talent. He has the ascending stud quarterback. He’s doing everything scientifically and medically in his power to not only get healthy but prevent future injuries. And he could easily, once again, be the top option in the Green Bay Packers offense. 

To me, that’s absolutely worth the stab in the WR4 range. With the wide receivers on my bench, I want upside – and the upside regarding Christian Watson in fantasy is as high as anyone’s: 

Grab your copy of the 2024 Fantasy Alarm Draft Guide now to see where Andrew Cooper, Howard Bender and Jim Bowden rank Christian Watson!