It's time to take the Ferrari out of the garage

Injuries kept Christian Watson from fully contributing at the start of the 2022 and '23 seasons. That has changed this year, and the Packers have the perfect opportunity to unleash him.

This evening, the Green Bay Packers will officially kick off their 2024 campaign with an international tilt against the Philadelphia Eagles. Though the final score of the game will not make or break the season for either squad, a victory would help announce the Packers as more than mere dark-horse Super Bowl contenders. The Eagles, despite myriad concerns, still possess an impressively talented roster. Knocking them off will require the right game plan and proper execution.

To do that, Green Bay will probably need the biggest Week 1 contribution to date from the team's most physically gifted offensive weapon: Christian Watson.

Watson has played two seasons in the NFL. At the start of each of them, he couldn't contribute fully to the Packers offense for one reason or another. As a rookie in 2022, he underwent a knee procedure just before training camp and didn't appear in the preseason. By the time Week 1 rolled around, Watson could only handle a limited role. The following year, the wideout's now infamous hamstring issues cost him the first three games of the season. Green Bay managed without him, but Watson's absence lowered the offensive ceiling for the team.

Much has changed in the time since. This offseason, the Packers sent Watson to Badger Athletic Performance, a facility that specializes in treating soft-tissue injuries like the ones that hampered the wideout in 2023. That visit revealed that Watson had a significant strength asymmetry in his hamstrings, an imbalance that likely caused or contributed significantly to his leg issues. Armed with that information, he went to work on building up the weaker leg.

"I definitely feel like I'm at 100% just in terms of what I'm able to do on the football field right now," Watson said during organized-team activities in May. "There's still a little bit of asymmetry there, and that's just something I'm attacking with the training staff in the weight room. But it's not enough to hold me back from anything. Obviously, I just got to continue to get that right so there's not any risks in the future."

At least so far, Watson has avoided a recurrence. Outside of a random hard hit during the Family Night practice and the usual few bumps and bruises, he has enjoyed a perfectly healthy training camp and preseason. Unless he gets lost on the way to the game, he looks set for the largest Week 1 workload of his young NFL career.

For the Packers, the timing couldn't get much better. Watson's particular set of skills lines up nearly perfectly with how the offense needs to attack the Eagles.