No. 9: Christian Watson, WR, Green Bay Packers
Watson was No. 82 for a couple of days, but by the time he hit the field for rookie minicamp a week after the draft, he had switched to No. 9.

"That was just kind of the jersey number that got thrown at me right away," Watson said. "In the moment I was just excited about being drafted and I was like, 'Yeah, let's goooo!' Then I thought about it and I was like, 'Do you have any other options?' So I just asked what the other options were and I decided on 9."

Watson wore No. 1 at North Dakota State, but no one has worn that number in a game for the Packers since Curly Lambeau in 1926.

"I talked to a lot of people obviously, but at the end of the day, I'm the one wearing the number," Watson said. "It's not really about the number, but 9 was the one." -- Rob Demovsky

Continue Reading @ ESPN 

ESPN wrote:

I still think teams should come up with some retirement number system, where the number stays retired for x number of years.

Originally Posted by: beast 

In Australia, in our country's main sport if a great of a team retires we have that player award the new rookie with their number in a bit of a ceremony sort of thing amongst the players. Like a passing of the torch sort of thing.

Originally Posted by: stevegb 

Just use triple numbers. It's not that big of a deal. There's nothing to it. In the 1950's and 60's tv cameras couldn't pick up the numbers as easily as they can today.

Originally Posted by: wpr 

I still think teams should come up with some retirement number system, where the number stays retired for x number of years.

Like say 50, 75 or 100 years...

Because unless the NFL starts allowing guys to wear three digits, they're going to run out of numbers if they keep fully retiring numbers and that puts the pause on them actually retiring a number of so many are already retired.

Also, I'm still confused about the unofficial retired numbers...

Packers officially retired numbers are 3, 4, 14, 15, 66 and 92.

While numbers 1 and 5 are unofficially retired...

Can you name the players that all the numbers were retired for?

Originally Posted by: beast 

I'm not nessarily against that, but the rules would have to change, to both allow it, and allow so that they numbers didn't have to be so big... so they can fit it on a jersey.

And I think we all know how extremely extremely slow the NFL is to changing rules, without a lawsuit threaten ... so I just don't see this happening, even if it's the easy and smart solution.

NFL often doesn't do the easy and smart thing...

So I think they should just limit it to a certain amount of years. Minimum of 20... probably 25 to 50.

Originally Posted by: beast 

I'm not nessarily against that, but the rules would have to change, to both allow it, and allow so that they numbers didn't have to be so big... so they can fit it on a jersey.

And I think we all know how extremely extremely slow the NFL is to changing rules, without a lawsuit threaten ... so I just don't see this happening, even if it's the easy and smart solution.

Originally Posted by: beast 

NFL often doesn't do the easy and smart thing...

Originally Posted by: beast 

So I think they should just limit it to a certain amount of years. Minimum of 20... probably 25 to 50.

Originally Posted by: beast 

Is there a rule against team additions to jerseys? Maybe something like a team patch or logo indicating that numbers importance in history?

Originally Posted by: Mucky Tundra 

There is a rule. Anytime a team wants to put a patch on their jerseys to honor a former player, owner or what have you, they need the approval from the Ivory Tower Clan. And then everyone has to have the same patch.

It's MLB not NFL but a few years ago the Big Island, Hawaii, was being devastated by a volcano lava flow. Kolten Wong wanted to put a patch on his jersey simply to raise awareness. Corp said no. He would have been the only one. His jersey would not have been "uniform". I've herad of similar things in the NFL but I do not recall them.

Originally Posted by: wpr