Packers finding No. 1 receiver won’t come easy this offseason

Paul Bretl | 2/27/2025

GREEN BAY, Wis. — With the Packers’ passing game struggling to find consistency down the stretch last season, much of the offseason attention outside of the building has been on the receiver position. Specifically, the timeless question when it comes to the Packers is does Green Bay need a true No. 1 target in their offense?

Adding to this speculation was running back Josh Jacobs during Super Bowl week, who said that the offense needed a player that is “proven to be (a No.) 1.”

For GM Brian Gutekunst, he heard Jacobs’ message and regularly meets with players to help him keep a pulse on what the feelings are in the locker room and on the team in general. So I’m going to guess that this wasn’t the first time Gutekunst had heard this. However, it also isn’t going to alter how he goes about the offseason either.

“What our players say in the media doesn’t really affect the way we’re going to go about things,” Gutekunst said at the NFL Combine. “I have a lot of private conversations with our players, and that’s very important to me. How they feel about our locker room and our team is important to me, but what happened that doesn’t really move the needle for me.”

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After the Packers’ young group of wide receivers burst onto the scene in 2023, collectively as a group, we didn’t see that unit take that step forward this past year as was the expectation. Instead, in some respects, this unit went backwards, with dropped passes, wrong routes being ran, and players simply not winning their one-on-one matchups often enough all being more prevalent issues that the offense had to navigate.

Two examples of this, as Matt LaFleur explained, happened in Green Bay’s playoff loss to Philadelphia. On the interception by Darius Slay, LaFleur noted that the receiver needed to do a better job of stacking the defender to help create a more open throwing window. On the interception over the middle by linebacker Zach Baun, the receiver was supposed to break in at 20 yards from the line of scrimmage but instead did so at 15 yards, throwing off the entire play design.

When it comes to the dropped passes, the Packers had the third-most drops and the second-highest dropped pass rate in 2024. Then, after the Minnesota game in Week 17, LaFleur mentioned the offense’s inability to win their one-on-one matchups against the Vikings’ man coverage-heavy secondary.

Over the course of a long NFL season, these are only a handful of examples of what went wrong, but given the magnitude of those games against Minnesota in Week 17 and Philadelphia in the playoffs, these examples are likely microcosms of a bigger, season-long struggle the Packers’ receivers faced.

The issue with adding a true No. 1 target to this room is that it’s no easy job to do–especially this offseason. This year’s wide receiver draft class doesn’t have the depth nor high-end talent at the position that we’ve grown accustomed to.

As far as free agency goes, the two players who fit that No. 1 mold are Davante Adams and Tee Higgins. Acquiring them is going to require big paydays, possibly draft capital traded away, or potentially both. And those are two avenues we don’t typically see the Packers go down, particularly at the receiver position.

So, in short, options are limited–unless Gutekunst wants to take a big swing. Spending a Day 2 pick on a receiver or signing a middle-tier free agent at that position I don’t believe accomplishes what the Packers need. They already have a lot of depth. They already have a variety of skill sets in that room. Another No. 2 or No. 3 target only adds to what Green Bay already has an abundance of in an already crowded room.

Given the circumstances and current receiver market, both in free agency and in the draft, the Packers again might have to bank on the internal development of those already on the roster.

“You’d like to have somebody move into that space,” Gutekunst said of having a No. 1 receiver, “but, at the same time, I’d like multiple guys to be able to move into that space. What I’m looking for is guys that, when they’re called upon, can perform at a high level. I think we have a lot of guys that have done that.”

Now, what the Packers do need to add this offseason at the receiver position is a vertical presence in Christian Watson’s absence. He is expected to miss some time next year and not having that element on the field can have a negative trickle-down effect to the rest of the unit.

When defenses don’t respect the deep ball, they play closer to the line of scrimmage, which shrinks the field and creates less space over the middle and on those short and intermediate routes. Even the run game can be affected with more defenders near the line of scrimmage. Acquiring this skill set also shouldn’t require a big free-agent contract or using a premium pick either.

“I think that’s going to create opportunities for some guys that we have on the roster now that I’m excited for,” Gutekunst said. “So, we’ll see how that shakes out, but we’ve got a long way to go. I mean, we’ve got free agency, the draft, everything coming up.”

Gutekunst has acknowledged that the Packers do need someone to step into that top wide receiver role. He’s also said that he believes already on the roster are a few players who have the ability to do that. An addition at this position can be justified given how last season played out and where the Packers are at in their competitive window; the external environment also has to be receptive to that.

So while there are options out there, there aren’t many that fill a very specific and high-end need that the Packers have.

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