Lazard Excited About New Reality of Facing Top Corners
GREEN BAY, Wis. – For the past four seasons, Davante Adams monopolized the attention of opposing defensive coordinators and their top cornerbacks.
With Adams traded to Las Vegas, that attention will shift elsewhere – most likely to Allen Lazard.
Lazard is Green Bay’s top returning receiver. He finished last year with a flourish. Over the final five games, he topped 70 yards three times. Put that production over 17 games, Lazard would catch 71 passes for 986 yards and 17 touchdowns.
Without 80 percent of the passing game flowing through Adams, Lazard should get more opportunities to potentially put himself in position to have a 1,000-yard season. On the other hand, he’ll face better defenders and game plans in which he no longer will be a relative afterthought.
It’s a challenge that Lazard isn’t running from.
“That’s what I’ve hoped for, that’s what I’ve dreamed about – going against the best guys in the league and having success against them time and time again,” Lazard said after practice on Tuesday. “That’s something I’ve definitely visualized and manifested, not just since I’ve been here but since I’ve been a kid, since I’ve been in college.”
For Lazard, it’s the next step in a career that started as an undrafted free agent in Jacksonville to becoming coach Matt LaFleur’s goon.
“I respect the hell out of him,” LaFleur said this week. “He’s a guy that puts it out there every time he goes out on the field. He wears a lot of hats for us and he’s a really intelligent player. I think you guys can see that by the way he goes out there and competes. He’s a great leader on our offense and, in particular, in that wide receiver room.”
Allen Lazard (Samantha Mada/USA Today Sports Images)
In terms of playing time and role, Lazard is the only sure thing on the receiver corps. Sammy Watkins had had a quiet camp and seems to lack an explosive second gear. Randall Cobb is a useful role player but not a go-to threat. Romeo Doubs is a rookie. Christian Watson is an injured rookie. Juwann Winfree hasn’t done much in his first three NFL seasons, though quarterback Aaron Rodgers gave him an unprompted shoutout on Tuesday.
Somebody from that group – or somebodies – must emerge alongside Lazard if this passing game is going to function on a week-to-week basis, let alone in big moments in big games against quality defenses with top cornerbacks.
Nobody has made more plays than Doubs, the fourth-round pick from Nevada. He hasn’t been perfect. He’s probably dropped more passes than any of the receivers. Rodgers can live with some physical mistakes. It’s the mental mistakes that will add gray to his stubble. On Monday, Doubs blocked the wrong person on a receiver screen and turned his radar off on a fake-spike by Rodgers in the final seconds of a two-minute drill.
Rodgers is notorious for his lack of patience with unproven players, and for good reason. Mental mistakes can turn into turnovers and turnovers can turn into losses. Perhaps he’s mellowed with age. Or, perhaps, it’s a nod to the reality that he’ll have to count on young receivers, like it or not and ready or not. Either way, Rodgers joined Doubs for lunch on Monday. The message he delivered was telling of Rodgers’ expectations.
“There were a couple plays that he would love to have back,” Rodgers recalled, “and I said, ‘It’s the best thing that could happen.’ Because I’d rather have it happen on a Monday in August than on a game day in September.”
Referencing the botched screen, Rodgers continued, “It looked really bad, and I’m like, ‘That’s the best thing that could happen.’ Now, the next time the situation comes up, we’ve got to do the right thing. But mistakes are going to happen. And the most important thing is to learn from those mistakes (and) not make repeat mistakes.”
Whoever emerges at receiver, the focal point of the passing game is going to be Lazard – the one in-his-prime player who has been there and done that and long ago earned Rodgers’ trust.
It’s a really small sample size, but Lazard has delivered without Adams in a big game. In 2020, Adams was inactive for a Week 3 showdown at New Orleans. Lazard caught 6-of-7 passes for 146 yards and one touchdown that night. He had a 48-yarder and a 5-yard touchdown against star cornerback Marshon Lattimore.
Lazard is ready for more, whether it’s the Vikings’ Patrick Peterson in Week 1 or Tampa Bay’s Carlton Davis and Buffalo’s Tre’Davious White in a couple first-half-of-the-season showdowns.
He’s eager to face those challenges.
“That’s what I’ve always thought about and I’ve always carried myself in that way of being the No. 1 guy and expecting those tough matchups, and for it be third down or late in the fourth quarter and having to make those plays,” Lazard said. “I think that’s why I’m in the position that I am right now because I’ve done that continuously throughout my career.”
