What's really going on with Jayden Reed?

Jayden Reed's production has dipped since his explosive start to the season. The explanation for this decline isn't as straightforward as some would like to believe.

For one reason or another, the Green Bay Packers cannot seem to avoid discourse about their wide receivers.

When All-Pro wideout Davante Adams still roamed the halls at 1265 Lombardi Ave., the team faced myriad questions about the lack of balance in the passing game. After the Packers traded Adams in 2022, the focus shifted to how the front office would replace him. Fast forward to this past offseason, and the discussion had shifted to which of the team's wideouts would serve as the No. 1, a debate that made head coach Matt LaFleur want to vomit.

Now, with four games left in the 2024 regular season, the Packers have encountered yet another issue regarding their receiving corps: What's going on with Jayden Reed?

The question holds some merit. Reed, a second-year wideout who led the team in receiving as a rookie, began the 2024 campaign with a bang. In the season opener, he hauled in four passes for 138 yards and a touchdown, adding another 33 yards and a score on the ground. Those numbers don't even a 38-yard touchdown Reed caught on the opening drive that came off the scoreboard due to dueling too-many-men-on-the-field penalties.

Reed's hot streak continued beyond Week 1. With Jordan Love sidelined for multiple weeks, Reed became a featured player in the ground game. When Love returned to the lineup in Week 4, Reed had his most productive day as a receiver so far this season, recording seven catches for 139 yards and a touchdown. At that point, it became clear that Reed had emerged as Green Bay's top playmaker, a development The Leap chronicled at the time.

However, Reed's productivity has noticeably slowed of late. Though he remains healthy and has yet to miss a contest, he has surpassed 55 receiving yards in a game just once over the past two months. The nadir came this past Thursday when Reed officially registered just one target for zero catches against the Detroit Lions.

That de facto goose egg of a stat line resulted in LaFleur explaining Reed's role in the offense.

"First of all, we only had 44 snaps. That obviously impacts your ability to get somebody the ball," LaFleur said Monday. "We tried to go to him early in the game. As a matter of fact, the first play was kind of designed to either go to him or [Dontayvion] Wicks. We got sacked on that play. The first third down, we threw him the ball, he drew a DPI. And then, early on, I think it was second-and-5, we had the ball at midfield, and we threw him an out route. We didn't complete that.

"But what they did to us is, we were putting 11 personnel out on the field and they kept playing what we were deeming a base defense with [Jamal] Adams in there. They were playing like a 3-4 structure. So they're inviting you to throw the football, and we didn't want to get into that game. We knew it was important to continue to run the ball."

Regardless of the exact reasoning behind Reed's limited production in Detroit, it doesn't explain the multiweek downward trend of his output. The explanation for that has multiple layers, some of which date back to the start of the season while others arose more recently.