3 players Packers must bench after ugly loss to Steelers

2. Christian Watson

It's really a shame that it's come to this, but it's time to have the discussion of whether or not Christian Watson is legitimately the fourth-best receiver on the Green Bay Packers' roster behind Romeo Doubs, Jayden Reed, and Dontayvion Wicks.

Whether the Packers are actively scheming all of these targets for Christian Watson or if he truly has this level of trust from Jordan Love right now is uncertain, but after a rookie season that took some time to develop, Watson might need to start losing playing time to other players who have been making better use of their target share.

Rob Demovsky outlined some of the struggles in a recent article on ESPN:

"Love targeted the speedy second-year receiver seven times Sunday. They connected on just two of them for 23 yards. Watson has caught just 42% of his passes this season, which at the end of Sunday's game left him with the lowest catch rate among the 126 players who had at least 30 targets this season, according to ESPN Stats & Information."

- Rob Demovsky

Those two catches that Watson had in this game against the Steelers were the first two completed passes of the game. You can't trust Watson as a WR1 at this point, there's no question about it. So at what point will the Packers stop treating him like one?

This isn't baseball where you can use predictive analytics in nearly every possible situation, but when someone is struggling at the rate Watson is struggling, you have to start playing the odds a little bit, right?

The Packers, at this point, can legitimately trust all of these players more than Christian Watson when the ball is thrown in their direction:

• Jayden Reed
• Romeo Doubs
• Luke Musgrave
• Aaron Jones
• Dontayvion Wicks

You don't want to give up on his upside, but you certainly can't justify him continually getting more snaps and targets than everyone else.