The Packers need to get wideout Jayden Reed the football early and often
Green Bay Packers second-year wideout Jayden Reed has all the markers of being an elite wide receiver. He doesn’t get that credit in the league just yet, but the Packers have a superstar on their hands in the second-round receiver out of Michigan State.
Reed has caught 44 passes for 693 yards and six touchdowns so far this season. He’s also rushed 13 times for 128 yards and a touchdown, as he’s largely head coach Matt LaFleur’s favorite chess piece on an end-around or reverses to the wide receiver.
Reed has the incredible ability to be a star as a pass catcher and a runner, so it makes sense that LaFleur looks to scheme up ways to get him the football. That’s all fine and dandy because Reed has shown the tendency to be able to put up big numbers. He has three games this season with over 100 yards receiving. Ironically, all three of those games are losses — to the Philadelphia Eagles, Minnesota Vikings, and Detroit Lions — but there’s nothing wrong with giving a team your best shot and coming up just short.
The Packers still need to prove that they can beat good teams in 2024, but at the very least, LaFleur could look at the game film and see that one of his best offensive weapons — and arguably his best offensive weapon not named Josh Jacobs — was plenty involved in the offense.
This begs the question, then: What happened the second time around against the Lions?
The Packers went blow-for-blow with the Lions on Thursday Night Football in Week 14, but they came up a bit short thanks to Jake Bates’ last-second field goal. Losing 34-31 on the road against arguably the best team in the NFL is nothing to be ashamed of, but would that result have looked different had Reed touched the ball…at all?
Reed was targeted just once against the Lions, and he ended with zero touches in the loss. It doesn’t sound like that’s a game plan he wants to see much moving forward.
“I always want the ball in my hands,” Reed said on Tuesday, according to Rob Demovsky of ESPN. “A lot of that I can’t control. I don’t make the calls. It’s a team game. The blocking’s got to go right; a lot has to go right for things like that to happen.”
As far as LaFleur is concerned, he told the media that the Packers did try to get Reed involved early. He was in the design to get the first pass of the game, but quarterback Jordan Love was sacked on that play. He was the target on Green Bay’s first third down, and he ended up drawing a defensive pass interference. LaFleur also explained that the Lions’ defense was lining up against the Packers’ three wideout sets in a way that enticed him to simply throw the ball and get away from Jacobs and the running game, but he didn’t want to do that. As such, LaFleur sent in more packages that didn’t involve Reed.
“We didn’t want to get into [that kind of] game,” LaFleur explained, per ESPN. “We knew it was important that we continue to run the ball. It’s just there wasn’t a lot of runs that draw up very nicely versus that configuration, so that’s part of the reason we did a little bit more, I would say we’re trying to go more, bigger people, [two-tight-end] personnel.”
The Packers need to feed Jayden Reed the football
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While that explanation makes sense on the surface, LaFleur’s excuse of needing to get bigger personnel on the field at the expense of having Reed on the field just doesn’t add up. Sure, Reed largely plays out of the slot, but he’s talented enough to play on the outside, and all of Green Bay’s wide receivers have been coached to play the X, Y, and Z positions.
Even if LaFleur wanted to get two tight ends on the field, he could have kept Reed on the field at the X or Z in those formations. It makes sense not to take Christian Watson out of the X position because he’s heating up, and he’s a true deep threat (he caught four passes for 114 yards against the Lions), but why not swap Reed in for Dontayvion Wicks in those positions?
That gets Reed on the field with two tight ends, and it even keeps him active as a motion and running threat. Wicks has a ton of potential, but he’s struggled with drops all season, and at this point of the 2024 campaign, touches should be prioritized for Reed, Watson, and Romeo Doubs (when he’s healthy) as opposed to touches for Wicks, Bo Melton, and Malik Health.
LaFleur even admitted as much that the Packers need to do a better job of effectively targeting Reed moving forward.
“Now where we can be better is, and I talked to Jayden about this, is just making sure that we have some of those plays for him in the game plan where he’s tagged to go in there and play wideout because obviously, he’s a very impactful player,” LaFleur said, per ESPN. “And we never … it wasn’t by design that we don’t want to throw him the ball. That’s never the case. We tried to down in the red area too … they did a good job.”
Sure, the Lions did a good job last Thursday Night, but LaFleur is thought of as one of the best offensive minds in the game for a reason. He’s been known to draw up some explosive offensive plays, so there’s no excuse for a play-caller of his caliber to just completely ice out one of his top playmakers because the defense has forced his hand.
Great play-callers know how to counter and open their star players back up. That has to be an area of focus for LaFleur and Green Bay’s offense moving forward. Reed needs the ball, and often.