The Green Bay Packers need to add more wide receivers to the room. While Christian Watson and Romeo Doubs should lead the unit in 2023 and beyond, veterans Allen Lazard and Randall Cobb are free agents. The Packers need more solid receivers before the season starts, whether Aaron Rodgers or Jordan Love is the quarterback.
The wide receiver market is a dangerous place to explore. Usually, mid-tier players get expensive contracts. Christian Kirk got $18 million per season last year from the Jacksonville Jaguars. However, smart teams tend to get good value signings, and Green Bay Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst has an excellent track record of adding external players.
The first step for the Packers is to see what they can get in a negotiation with Lazard. If they find a middle ground, keeping a player who’s been around for five years and is a solid receiver and blocker might make sense.
Even though Lazard’s market value is around $12 million per year, according to Spotrac, the veteran wants more than that.
If the Packers can’t re-sign Lazard, there is one wide receiver on the market with a higher ceiling and possibly a lower cost: D.J. Chark.
Gutekunst prefers tall (6’2” or more), heavy (190 lbs. or more), and athletic (relative athletic score 8.2 or more) wide receivers. He has drafted six receivers as the Packers GM, and Amari Rodgers is the only one who didn’t fit this mold.
But Chark does. A 6’4”, 205 lbs., he has a 9.94 RAS, which is close to the maximum (10). Chark is also one year younger than Lazard and had one 1,000-yard season, in 2019.
Health has been the issue for Chark. He’s never played a full season and missed six games in his one year with the Detroit Lions. That’s why his market value isn’t that high.
According to Spotrac, he’s projected to get a three-year, $28.75 million contract. At $9.5 million, his yearly average would be slightly lower than the deal he got from Detroit last offseason — a one-year, $10 million contract.
“Whenever you lose a player the caliber of Tae [Davante Adams], you’re going to have to overcome it,” Gutekunst said in December. “I think we struggled out of the gate to do that. At the same time, that room, in particular, looks pretty bright moving forward.”
While it’s true that the Packers have good young centerpieces, it’s highly valuable to add more weapons to ease their development.
The advantage of doing a longer-term contract is the Packers would have the ability to limit Chark’s guarantees. They’d also have to restructure the deal to preserve the 2023 cap space because Green Bay lacks flexibility.
Chark broke out in 2019 with a prolific season for the Jacksonville Jaguars, the team that had drafted him in the second round one year earlier. He had 1,008 yards and eight touchdowns. Chark had 706 yards and five TDs in 2020. However, he’s played only 15 games in the last two years. Chark only played four games in 2021, a big reason why the Jaguars let him go.
Recently, Chark said he likes to play in an offense full of role players, so coaches can take advantage of what each player does well — and that’s kind of what he would have in Green Bay.
“Because you get in offenses where they kind of force one person to do it all. Like, ‘I’m going to force you to do all the crossing routes and the quick routes, and I’m going to make you run the go-balls,'” Chark said on the St. Brown brothers’ podcast for The 33rd Team. “Sometimes, you get a player that can do all those things like (Justin Jefferson) in Minnesota. He can do all the things, but it catches a defense off-guard when all these people are good at different things, so we’re going to use it all.”
While Chark played 11 games in 2022 and Lazard played 15, Chark had a higher PFF grade (69.6 to 69.0) and more yards per reception (16.7 to 13.1). Lazard had more yards and receptions per game, which indicates the difference in play style. Chark is more of a fast big-threat receiver, and Lazard is a possession-and-security-focused receiver. The difference in price might be the factor that decides which one the Packers should sign.
