What’s fun to ponder is if his last full game before getting hurt was just a preview of the rest of Kraft’s career.<\/p>\n
In a big road win at Pittsburgh, which featured receiver Christian Watson<\/a>‘s return from his torn ACL, Kraft had his best game as a pro \u2013 seven catches, 143 yards, two TDs, and running with abandon every time he got his hands on the ball.<\/p>\n It was his second 100-yard game of the season (also Week 2 vs. Washington, 6-124-1). As the proverbial saying goes, the game had slowed down for Kraft in his third year. He was beating man coverage more regularly, and he was looking even more dangerous after the catch.<\/p>\n His role was growing, for good reason, and he wants to remain as big a part of the offense as he was when his season came to a screeching halt.<\/p>\n “I wasn’t feeling that stress or anxiety, mainly just excitement,” he said of his 2025 season. “I was hungry for every snap, every opportunity I could get. That’s going to be the same thing going forward. I don’t know entirely what my future holds in this offense, but \u2026 as many snaps as I can get, whether that’s 40 or 65. I don’t ever want to come out of this game again.<\/p>\n “Moving forward, I do feel like as a tight end, I’m a full package and that I can be anything for this team. Just put the ball in my hands.”<\/p>\n This past season, a surge of explosive production from Watson once he progressed to a full workload helped the offense get back on track after an initial lull following Kraft’s injury.<\/p>\n Watching those struggles, as well as how the season ended this past weekend in the wild-card round, was tough on the ultra-competitive Kraft. He had the joy of a newborn daughter at home, but he felt this Packers team “had all the pieces” before injuries befell him, Micah Parsons<\/a>, Devonte Wyatt<\/a> and others.<\/p>\n Now that the missing-out part is over, he’s focused on rejoining the team and being ready when needed.<\/p>\n “When I wasn’t able to be out there for the last month and a half, two months this season, it was really hard on me \u2026 just knowing that, if I would have been out there and contributing, maybe things would have gone different,” he said. “But the end of the day, my injury is my reality, and all I can do is work and come back to be a better Packer than I was before.<\/p>\n “This is something I could have gone without, but it will make me a better person, a better athlete, a better teammate. It just has to.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What’s fun to ponder is if his last full game before getting hurt was just a preview of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":674330,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7,34,507,506,6,14233],"class_list":{"0":"post-674329","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-homepage-cp","10":"tag-news-national-feature","11":"tag-news-stories","12":"tag-nfl","13":"tag-tucker-kraft"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115888604257852278","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=674329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/674330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=674329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=674329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=674329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}