A Good Comp for Christian Watson

In his latest MAQB column for Sports Illustrated, Albert Breer pinpoints another FCS receiver who wound up being a three-time Pro Bowler.

GREEN BAY, Wis. – How much did the Green Bay Packers love Christian Watson? So much that they traded two second-round picks to a division rival to select him in April’s NFL Draft.

“Obviously, he’s a big, fast, physical receiver. We think his best football is ahead of him,” general manager Brian Gutekunst said after Day 2 of the draft. “We brought him in here for one of our 30 visits, got a chance to spend a lot of time with him, and just really felt he [is a] really smart kid that we feel will fit our culture. Like everything, obviously, he’s got really good tape, his athletic traits are off the chart. The more we got to know him as a person, we just felt really good about him.”

The big asterisk on Watson was level of competition. He played at North Dakota State, a program that churns out FCS national championships in assembly line-like fashion but doesn’t line up and face Big Ten or SEC opponents every week.

With size-speed-school similarities, Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer came up with a welcome comparison in his Monday Afternoon Quarterback Column.

“The more I heard about North Dakota State’s Christian Watson in the fall, the more it reminded me of what people said about the late Vincent Jackson when he was coming out in 2005 – from how raw Watson is, to the size/speed potential he possesses, to his non-FBS roots. And I’m told he had a real solid spring with the Packers, which only bolsters that thought.”

Jackson played at Northern Colorado, where he holds school records with 3,548 receiving yards and 37 touchdowns. As a senior, with Jackson producing 80 receptions for 1,382 yards and 11 touchdowns, the Bears finished just 2-9 against FCS competition.

Watson wasn’t nearly as dominant from a statistical perspective but he wasn’t asked to be a focal point in the Bison’s run-first offense. He caught 43 passes for 801 yards (18.6 average) and seven touchdowns as a senior and averaged 20.4 yards per reception for his career.

At the 2005 Scouting Combine, Jackson measured 6-foot-4 3/4 and a whopping 241 pounds. He ran his 40 in 4.51 seconds and posted a 39-inch vertical jump. At the 2022 Scouting Combine, Watson measured 6-foot-4 1/8 and 208 pounds. He ran his 40 in 4.36 seconds with a 38.5-inch vertical leap.

Jackson was selected 61st overall by the San Diego Chargers. The 11th receiver off the board, he finished second in the draft class with 540 receptions, 9,080 yards and 57 touchdowns, trailing only Atlanta’s Roddy White, the 27th pick, in those categories. He was a three-time Pro Bowler. Only White (four) had more, and eight of the other receivers taken ahead of him failed to make even one all-star team.

If Watson can deliver a career on par with Jackson, the Packers would continue their remarkable run of success with their second-round receivers.

“His combination of size and speed is great,” offensive coordinator Adam Stenavich said. “He’s a big guy. He can move. He’s going to be a problem once he figures things out.”

Click here for the full MAQB from Breer.