There are two things that are true about the Packers’ wide receiver room right now: they have two very exciting rookies and those rookies are going to look like ghosts early in the season.

The Romeo Doubs hype is very real and very understandable. He showed up in some sort of exciting way seemingly every day in training camp, and he mostly backed that up during the Packers’ three preseason games. People are bound to have some strong feelings about him.

Christian Watson, meanwhile, is a bit of a mystery. Even if you’re skeptical about Watson making the leap from North Dakota to the NFL, it’s impossible to deny his world-class athleticism. That he’s been kept on the sideline only makes him that much more tantalizing — a big bundle of potential just sitting there like a sports car your parents have bought you that you’re not allowed to drive just yet.

But neither of them is going to be a primary option early in the season. In fact, they probably won’t see the field much at all if past is precedent.

Consider the rest of the wide receiver depth chart. Allen Lazard is the top dog; neither Doubs or Watson is pushing him off the field. The same goes for Sammy Watkins; Matt LaFleur and Aaron Rodgers have big plans for him, so, barring injury, he’ll be out there, too. (Not that betting on Watkins getting hurt is all that risky — he’s been hurt almost as much as healthy in his career to date.)

Beyond that, Randall Cobb’s going to get his snaps, and LaFleur and Brian Gutekunst seem bound and determined to make Amari Rodgers a thing. How many snaps will there be for Doubs and Watson to make an impact? Heck, forget making an impact. How often will they even be on the field?

It wouldn’t be at all surprising to see them come along slowly, easing into the lineup before taking on bigger roles corresponding to their abilities later in the season. But that may actually be a good thing.

It’s a fairly well-established fact that wide receivers can take some time to settle in at the NFL level. Though there are exceptions — some of them even in Green Bay — big production for rookies really isn’t the norm. 

Our predictions for Doubs and Watson are correspondingly low: we set 20 catches as the low-end number for Doubs and forecasted at least 40 catches and 600 yards for Watson. Put differently, that’s a little over a catch per game for Doubs and about two catches and 35 yards per game for Watson.

But that’s not to say they won’t have an impact. In the right role, both Doubs and Watson are perfectly capable of doing good things for the Packers. It just may take them some time to get there, which is why it could work to the Packers’ benefit to have a well-established pecking order ahead of them.

Say it turns out to be true that the Packers’ two young receivers will need some time to settle in. Someone will have to produce in the meantime, and that someone will probably come from the Packers’ veteran trio of receivers. Expect that to hold true until the youngsters are good and ready. When they are, Matt LaFleur will find ways to use them. But until they are, expect to see them on the sideline more often than not.