For Green Bay Packers receiver Jalen Wayne, his athletic career should have been preordained.
Wayne is cousins with former Indianapolis Colts star Reggie Wayne, a six-time Pro Bowler who ranks 10th in NFL history in receptions and receiving yards.
Instead, he didn’t know they were related until Reggie Wayne scored a 53-yard touchdown against the Bears in Super Bowl XLI.
“My dad came in the living room and was like, ‘That’s your uncle,’” Wayne said in the back corner of the Packers’ auxiliary locker room last week. “Well, cousin, but we call him my uncle. He told me that that day.”
Wayne was 8 or 9 at the time, but that wasn’t exactly the launching point of his NFL journey.
While in middle school, Wayne suffered a broken kneecap and gave up the sport.
“One of my friends kind of chopped me and I broke my knee in half,” he said.
Two screws were inserted to repair the injury, and Wayne shifted his focus to basketball.
“I gave it up and I was just going to hoop or whatever,” Wayne said. “I had a couple basketball offers, but it wasn’t big enough for my liking. So, my friends told me to try out football again, and then I tried out senior year, transferred to a better high school, and then started playing.”
He was a natural. At Spanish Fort (Ala.) High School, coach Ben Blackmon made him a focal point of the offense as a receiver and runner.
“I just had to pick it up on the fly and I fell in love with it, just having the ball in my hands a lot,” Wayne said.
It was a different story at South Alabama, especially when Steve Campbell took over as coach in 2018.
“He didn’t really like how I did things,” Wayne said, “so I kind of had to remodel my game.”
Who better to learn the finer points of elite receiver play than by turning to an elite receiver? Wayne reached out to his famous cousin via social media and found a willing mentor.
“That’s when me and my uncle started talking every day, because I hit him up and I asked him, like, ‘Hey, I heard that we’re family some way, somehow.’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, we are,’” Wayne recalled.
“And I was like, ‘Give me some advice on drills and stuff to do to at least get to where you are.’ He gave me a whole set of things – big messages of stuff that he used to do – and I would do it every day. After that, I got better really, really fast.”
Wayne caught eight passes for 115 yards during his first three seasons at South Alabama but 144 passes for 1,863 yards during his final three seasons.
Despite the production and famous last name, Wayne went undrafted in 2023 and spent training camp with the Buffalo Bills and Cleveland Browns. With Buffalo, he was given No. 87 – the jersey worn by Reggie Wayne, who as receivers coach of the Indianapolis Colts was not available for this story.
Jalen Wayne was released by the Browns during their final roster cuts and was out of the NFL the rest of the year.
In January, he signed with the CFL’s Montreal Alouettes. The defending champions were well-stocked at receiver and released him in June.
“This past summer, I wouldn’t say I was giving it up, but I was pretty close to it,” Wayne said.
When the Packers called him in mid-July for a workout, he was helping build the inside of houses for a friend and his father.
“I was out in the heat every day [for his job], so it wasn’t much of trying to get stamina-wise,” Wayne said. “I was just trying to get my feet and my routes clean enough to where they wouldn’t think I was just on my ass all day.”
Wayne had two days to get ready for a chance to rekindle his football career.
“It was crazy,” Wayne said. “My agent called me one morning and I was asleep and I didn’t answer. Then I woke up to the message that the Packers wanted me to work out.
“When I saw that, I was like, ‘All right, I know I’m going to make the team.’ It’s just about, ‘When am I leaving? When am I going to get up there?’ He’s like, ‘Just put in the time and you know how you do it.’
“So, I came here and did my thing, and trying to see where it gets me now.”
The Packers signed him on July 19, just a few days before the start of training camp. They gave him jersey No. 2.
Wayne didn’t catch any passes in his return to Cleveland last week but has made enough plays on the practice field to show he belongs.
Obviously, the Packers have a loaded receiver corps. Even if they keep six receivers on their 53-man roster, they’ll need another two or three for the practice squad.
The depth chart isn’t on Wayne’s mind, though. Reggie Wayne’s best advice was staying focused on the task at hand. He’ll have three more big opportunities to state his case: Sunday night’s preseason game at the Denver Broncos, a joint practice in Green Bay against the Baltimore Ravens on Thursday and the preseason finale against the Ravens on Saturday.
“Just keep my head down and work, and just find a routine and stick to that routine,” Wayne said. “That’ll get you through the league and get you through your career.”
