The Packers Christian Watsons rise from geeky teen to Aaron Rodgers potential top tar

Publish date: 2022-03-12

Christian Watson started riding dirt bikes when he was 4 years old. His grandfather rode them professionally, so it’s how they connected.

“Most kids aren’t doing that,” said Watson’s mother, Christa. “Most kids aren’t that coordinated. You don’t put a motor vehicle that can go 40 miles per hour in the hands of a 4-year-old unless they’re capable.”

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Young Christian was more than capable.

His mom nicknamed him “Spiderman” because he climbed walls and doors and hung upside down off anything. In gym class push-up competitions, he did dozens more than the second-place finisher to ensure nobody came close to beating him. One of his youth football coaches, Danny Biglow, remembers him doing backflips for fun at 8 years old.

So it’s no surprise to those who’ve known him best that Watson floored the NFL with his dominance at the NFL Combine in March. At 6-foot-4 and 208 pounds, he ran a blistering 4.36 40-yard dash and led all wide receivers with a broad jump of 11 feet, 4 inches.

“He’s got traits that few humans on the earth possess in terms of size, speed, athletic ability,” said Tre Watson, Christian’s older brother and a 2018 All-American linebacker at Maryland. “We kind of joke around and say it, but he really did walk out of the womb with 1 percent body fat and running a faster 40 than me.”

Christian Watson blazed to a 4.36-second 40 time at the NFL Combine. (Justin Casterline / Getty Images)

Watson isn’t just a combine darling, an athletic marvel and a mythical creature out of FCS powerhouse North Dakota State. The Packers traded up 19 spots to draft him for a reason. Fair or not, he’ll be associated with outgoing superstar Davante Adams. Green Bay dealt the NFL’s best receiver to the Raiders on March 18, replacing him in part with someone who received zero FBS offers out of high school and only recently entered the national spotlight.

Can Watson go from that to the next Packers star?

“The headline with Christian is his combine numbers,” said 49ers quarterback Trey Lance, Watson’s college teammate. “But he’s also a lot more than that.”

Even when Watson had his own room as a kid, he’d sleep in Tre’s bed so that when the brothers woke up, they could fight, wrestle and play video games.

“I’d beat him 100 times until he finally figured out a way to beat me,” Tre said, “and that’s just the way he’s always done everything.”

Before he was even a football player, Christian Watson was a dirt bike rider. (Photo courtesy Christa Watson)

Christian always found a way to keep up, whether it was eventually beating his brother in “Halo 3” or “Call of Duty,” running 100s and 200s alongside his dad — Tim Watson, who now goes by Tazim Wajid Wajed, was a 1993 Packers draft pick as a defensive back, and he saw NFL playing time with the Chiefs, Giants and Eagles — or playing in Thanksgiving Day football games with kids three years older.

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Tre was in the eighth grade, Christian in fifth, when the younger brother got a rare snap with the big boys. A kid broke out on what looked to be a 90-yard touchdown run until Christian, chasing from 20 yards behind, caught up and dragged him down to prevent the score, even sprinting past his older brother to make the tackle.

Christian earned the nickname “Scoot” at a young age. Biglow, who coached him at age 8, described him as a “lightning bolt.” He tried getting the ball in Watson’s hands at any cost, playing him at tailback and quarterback, because Watson was gone if he hit the open field. He once hurdled an opponent clean at full speed in middle school and never broke stride for a touchdown.

Christa spent twice as much in rent to live in the district that allowed Christian to play at Tampa powerhouse Plant High School because he wanted the challenge. There were 125 kids on the varsity team at Plant and another 110 on junior varsity. Whereas his brother played four years of varsity at other high schools in the area, Christian didn’t play varsity until his junior year.

“It wasn’t that he couldn’t play on varsity because he was a freshman or a sophomore,” Christa said. “It’s that you don’t — there are too many kids.”

When Watson finally did make the varsity team, he was a scrawny 5-foot-9 receiver who didn’t register on recruiting radars. Mom told coaches her son was legit, but he didn’t get the chance to show it for his first three years of high school. “They laughed in my face,” she said.

“When he was a junior, he was not a recruitable player and didn’t play for us,” said former Plant head coach Robert Weiner, now the quarterbacks coach at the University of Toledo. “Was a really small kid … He was kind of a geeky little kid, like a 15-year-old can be.”

Between his junior and senior seasons, however, Watson sprouted four inches to 6-foot-1 and change, and he packed on 20 pounds to weigh almost 180 by the end of summer camp. In Plant’s first game against Venice High School, Watson ran a post route off of play-action against a single-high-safety look, won a jump ball over the safety and backpedaled into the end zone after the defender fell to the ground.

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Watson averaged 17.1 yards per reception and caught eight touchdowns in his senior season. Weiner pitched Watson to Power 5 head coaches, but they weren’t sold.

“I had some major Division I players at that time, so I think they were writing down notes on all of those guys,” Weiner said. “And I think when I got to Christian, they were actually fake writing on the paper. They were pretending like they were listening to me and writing down information.”

Weiner vowed Watson would be a great college player and even an eventual NFL draft pick. He told the coaches that nobody was on Watson, that they could have a steal if they took a chance on him. No FBS school thought he was worth that chance.

Said Watson: “I tell myself all the time all I need is one opportunity.”

Christian Watson turned a few heads during his senior season. (Courtesy North Dakota State University athletics)

Almost everyone at North Dakota State has a different answer when asked about the most athletic thing they’ve seen Watson do.

Lance says it’s a two-play sequence against Montana State in 2019 when Watson scored on a 75-yard fade down the left sideline, then took a jet sweep 75 yards for a touchdown on the first play of the next series.

NDSU wideout Phoenix Sproles remembers Watson jumping over a South Dakota defender in 2019. “I think he was in the air for at least 10 yards,” Sproles said. “I could’ve sworn it.”

Bison head coach Matt Entz recalls two big catches against Missouri State in 2021, one to convert a third down in the fourth quarter and one a touchdown on the final drive to seal a win.

NDSU receivers coach Noah Pauley first recounts Watson catching a fade in the end zone while touching one foot down against Northern Iowa in 2019. There’s also the play Watson laid three blocks to spring a 75-yard touchdown run against Albany. “That’s my favorite play of all time of Christian Watson right there,” Pauley said.

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Watson still did backflips for fun in college. He would even do them after finishing a grueling leg day workout. He also would challenge teammates to races after leg day or after conditioning workouts.

“Like after winning in all the conditioning reps, he’ll go and race people, and he’ll just burn people down the sidelines,” Sproles said. “I haven’t even raced him. I know better. I’m a fast guy, but Christian, at 6-4, 208, that’s different.”

Of his own race with Watson, NDSU teammate Zach Mathis added: “Not even close.”

Watson’s numbers didn’t pop in college compared to some other FBS receivers, which can be partially explained by the Bison’s heavy emphasis on the run. But the Packers couldn’t ignore him on tape. Of his 180 career rushing, receiving and return attempts, 57 went for at least 20 yards. He averaged 20.38 yards per catch in college and returned two kickoffs for touchdowns. He’s proficient in blocking, too — he had to be in the Bison offense or else he would’ve been on the bench.

Those coaches who laughed at Christian’s mother when she vouched for her son? Christa estimates having 10 text messages from them saying she was right all along. When Watson took over the combine, some of the college coaches that ignored Weiner’s pitch of Watson in high school called back to express regret. People are coming around on the kid with no FBS offers now that one of the sport’s most iconic franchises showed how badly they wanted him.

“What I’m most looking forward to is everyone else finding out what we already know,” Watson’s dad said. “I still don’t think people realize what Christian is.”

Watson isn’t expected to be Adams, at least not right away, but there’s certainly pressure accompanying his Green Bay arrival. After the draft, Adams actually commented on a slideshow of Watson posted by the Packers’ Instagram account, “Kid gon be the truth.”

He’s a second-round receiver for a franchise that has drafted stars like Adams, Jordy Nelson, Greg Jennings, Randall Cobb and James Jones in the same vicinity. But unlike them, he might be WR1 as a rookie. First-year receivers haven’t exactly thrived under four-time NFL MVP Aaron Rodgers, if only because they haven’t had to. Nelson had Jennings above him on the depth chart. Adams had Nelson above him.

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Watson might have to occupy the depth chart’s top spot, if only because Allen Lazard, Cobb and Sammy Watkins have provided little indication they can be a bona fide top guy.

When Rodgers texted Watson shortly after the Packers selected him, he told the 22-year-old to be ready to work.

Rodgers can simply glance at a receiver a certain way on the line of scrimmage, and it’s the receiver’s job to know that means to make a certain route adjustment. Meshing with a quarterback as cerebral as Rodgers requires time, and Watson may not have a lot of that before he needs to be the top target in games that count.

Still, those who’ve witnessed Watson’s rise from up close don’t doubt he’ll be able to jell with the future Hall of Famer in no time.

“Just as freaky as Christian is athletically, cognitively he’s the same way,” Tre said. “If he wasn’t a football player, he was going to be an engineering major.”

During receiver meetings in college, Watson knew what running backs, offensive linemen and defenders were supposed to do on each play. He’d call out plays on film that teammates hadn’t even seen yet.

“He was a guy that could take something from the meeting room and immediately apply it on the football field,” Pauley said. “He didn’t have to run it 10 different times to get it right.”

It’s that kind of quick recall Watson will need to earn both Rodgers’ trust and snaps as a rookie, the former perhaps dictating the latter. He has a familiar face in Green Bay to aid his transition, as Pauley is one of 12 coaches spending time with the Packers this offseason as part of the Bill Walsh Diversity Coaching Fellowship.

In brief offseason workouts against phantom defenses, Watson has already flashed traits the Packers became enamored with. It’s anybody’s guess what he’ll become, but he’s off to a promising start.

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“His combination of size and speed is great,” Packers 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.”

Added Cobb: “He has the total package. Just being around him for the past week and seeing some of the things he can do, he has all the tools. He’s very gifted.”

Watson has been asked plenty about his father since being drafted by the same team as him, but he’s carved his own path — and even called his own shot.

He played in a youth football championship game at age 7 in Raymond James Stadium, home of the Buccaneers, and his mom remembers him saying that day that he wanted to play there in the NFL. He’ll get to, now 16 years older, when the Packers play the Buccaneers in Week 3 just four miles from where he attended high school.

In Week 3, Christian Watson will make the same run onto the Raymond James Stadium field he made years earlier for a youth football championship. (Photo courtesy Christa Watson)

He’ll be a celebrity that day in his hometown, but he’s already a celebrity in Green Bay, where fans met him at the airport with autograph and picture requests when he first landed in Green Bay. The spotlight is all his now, and it’s bright. The pressure is on to become the Packers’ next star wide receiver, but Watson has proven there’s no reason to overlook him any longer.

“You tell your kids they can be anything they want to,” Christa Watson said. “They work really hard to be that. They look at you with their little face at 4 years old and tell you, ‘This is what I wanna be.’

“And now they are.”

(Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic. Watson photos courtesy NDSU athletics; Rodgers photo: Rob Carr / Getty Images)

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