Packers UDFAs Isaiah Neyor, J. Michael Sturdivant Outplaying Savion Williams for Big-Body Receiver Role
Green Bay’s wide receiver room has a strange problem for a Matt LaFleur offense: it’s small. LaFleur has spent his tenure as head coach chasing big-bodied receivers who can win at the catch point and hold up in the run game, but outside of Christian Watson, the depth chart is short on size. That’s what makes the emerging Packers wide receiver competition between undrafted rookies Isaiah Neyor and J. Michael Sturdivant worth watching — because through one preseason game, both look more ready to play the position than 2025 third-round pick Savion Williams.
Jayden Reed and Matthew Golden aren’t changing that equation; neither will ever be confused for a “big” receiver. Further down the depth chart, Bo Melton and Skyy Moore make their living either playing bigger than their listed size or leaning into the traits that make smaller receivers valuable in their own right. That leaves Williams as the lone exception to the small-receiver rule — except it’s fair to ask whether “receiver” is even the right word for what he is right now.
Savion Williams Still Looks Like a Football Player Without a Position
The scouting report on Williams heading into the 2025 draft was straightforward: a massive athlete who still needed to learn the finer points of playing receiver. A year later, with half a season of NFL tape in the bank, that description still fits. Williams remains, at best, an unrefined route runner. He belongs on an NFL field because he’s an elite athlete, not yet because he’s mastered the position.
Williams caught 10 passes for 78 yards and a touchdown as a rookie in 2025, and he opened the Packers’ preseason with an 11-yard catch against Pittsburgh, according to the team’s in-game updates from Packers.com. But production and polish aren’t the same thing, and it’s the polish that’s still missing.
Neyor and Sturdivant Bring the Size the Room Is Missing
Neyor, who appeared in Green Bay’s wild-card loss to the Bears last season after spending most of 2025 on the practice squad, stands 6-foot-4 and 218 pounds. He turned in one of the best athletic profiles of any receiver in the 2025 draft class — RAS.football posted an unofficial 9.97 out of 10.00 on his combine numbers, ranking 11th out of more than 3,400 wide receivers dating back to 1987, according to a post on X from RAS.football:
Isaiah Neyor is a WR prospect in the 2025 draft class. He scored an unofficial 9.97 #RAS out of a possible 10.00. This ranked 11 out of 3408 WR from 1987 to 2025.
Splits projected, times unofficial.https://t.co/TmcbybAh18 pic.twitter.com/s3I00O62Et
— RAS.football (@MathBomb) March 1, 2025
Sturdivant, a Florida transfer who went undrafted this spring, is a shade shorter and lighter at 6-foot-3, 207 pounds, but still comfortably fits the big-receiver mold. His athletic testing was similarly loud — Acme Packing Company’s Paul Noonan flagged him as part of a deep, oversized 2026 receiver class worth the Packers’ attention, writing that Green Bay’s receiver room was undersized at nearly every spot except Watson.
Both got extended run in Thursday’s preseason opener at Acrisure Stadium, a 28-9 loss to the Steelers. Neyor played 37 snaps and caught four passes for 34 yards, leading Green Bay in both categories, per Packers.com’s live game tracker. Sturdivant played 26 snaps, catching two passes for 26 yards, including an 8-yard grab to move the chains, according to the same source.
| Player | Snaps | Receptions | Yards |
|---|---|---|---|
| Isaiah Neyor | 37 | 4 | 34 |
| J. Michael Sturdivant | 26 | 2 | 26 |
| Savion Williams | N/A | 1 | 11 |
Why the Difference Shows Up on Tape
The numbers only tell part of it. What stood out Thursday was how in control both players looked. Neyor and Sturdivant ran routes with functional pace — starting fast, settling into breaks, and getting in and out of cuts without wasted movement. That’s the part of receiver play that doesn’t show up in a 40 time. It’s built from reps, and it’s the exact area evaluators flagged as unfinished business for Williams coming out of TCU.
Route discipline matters more in LaFleur’s scheme than most, because Green Bay’s passing game leans on option routes and full-field reads that require receivers to be exactly where quarterback Jordan Love expects them to be, not just physically capable of getting open. A big catch radius means little if the route doesn’t put a receiver in the right spot at the right time. Right now, Neyor and Sturdivant look closer to reliable on that front than Williams does.
What This Means for the Roster Battle
Williams isn’t getting cut. As a 2025 third-round pick entering Year 2, his roster spot is about as safe as anyone’s outside the true top of the depth chart. That’s reflected in early roster projections, which continue to list Williams among Green Bay’s Week 1 receivers alongside Watson, Reed, Golden, Melton and Moore, with Neyor and Sturdivant projected to battle for practice-squad eligibility rather than active-roster spots.
But if the Packers are looking for a big-bodied receiver who plays like an actual receiver, rather than an oversized gadget piece, Neyor and Sturdivant have made a stronger case through one preseason game. Whether that’s enough to crack the 53-man roster in a crowded position group remains an open question — one Green Bay will keep answering over the next three weeks of the preseason.
