It’s been a long time since the Green Bay Packers had a dangerous return specialist. They haven’t had a touchdown on a return in more than a decade when Randall Cobb scored on a 108-yard kick return in his first NFL game in Week 1 of the 2011 season against the New Orleans Saints.

But midway through this season, Keisean Nixon took over as the team’s primary return specialist and suddenly, the Packers have found a player who strikes fear into opposing special teams units.

Quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who has been with the team since 2005, made an astute observation after the Packers win Monday night over the Los Angeles Rams.

“In all my 18 years, I’ve never once, until tonight, seen an opposing team’s kicker kick away from one of our returners on purpose,” Rodgers told reporters. “That’s fun. That’s pretty incredible. Big kudos to Rich [Bisaccia] and his staff, and obviously Keisean. He’s been a big difference-maker for us. You hate to do the what ifs and the look backs, but there’s definitely some ways that the players are playing for us that you wonder how it would’ve been had things been a little different starting the season.”

Nixon has really made a difference since taking over for the now departed Amari Rodgers. As a kick returner, he is averaging a healthy 25.4-yards per runback on 28 attempts. Those numbers could be even better but penalties have wiped out several long returns that Nixon made including a 49-yard effort against the Rams on Monday.

Nixon needs 288 yards in the final three games to go over 1,000 yards for the season. That’s extremely impressive when you consider he didn’t return any kicks for the Packers until Week 6 and didn’t take over as the primary kick returner until Week 8.

Nixon has also been dangerous on punt returns. He’s averaging 15.3-yards per return on six runbacks. He didn’t take over that job until Week 10.

The Packers signed Nixon this offseason at the behest of special teams coordinator Rich Bisaccia. The former South Carolina star played the last three seasons with Bisaccia with the Raiders and was considered one of the team’s best players on the team’s kick and punt return coverage units. The team planned to use him primarily as a gunner.  

In his three previous years in the NFL, Nixon had only returned six kickoffs and had never returned a punt. His average on those six returns was an uninspiring 14.0 per runback.

Nixon’s emergence even surprised head coach Matt LaFleur. “We should have had him in there earlier, and we didn’t,” LaFleur admitted Monday night. “I don’t think we knew what we had.”

Bisaccia wasn’t initially sure what he had either. When he chose Nixon to replace Rodgers as the punt returner, Bisaccia simply said he did it for a very simple reason. “Making the decision to put him back there, I felt like we'd get the ball caught.”

But Nixon has done a lot more than that. His combination of speed and fearlessness has made him a dangerous weapon whenever he gets his hands on the football.

The Packers offense struggled in the middle of the season due to injuries and inexperience at wide receiver, injuries and a lack of continuity along the offensive line and Aaron Rodgers’ broken thumb. If the Packers had a weapon like Nixon back there returning kicks and punts from Week 1, the better field position may have made a difference for the offense both in their point totals and in their confidence level.

Even if Nixon would have just held onto the ball and gotten the obvious and easy yards offered to him on kicks and punts, the Packers record would probably be at least a game or two better than it is now and that would give Green Bay a much better chance of reaching the playoffs. Certainly, Amari Rodgers’ fumble was a big reason for the team’s loss to the Commanders in Week 7.

But the Packers can’t go back and change the past. They have three games left on their schedule and need to win all three and get some help to reach the playoffs. There is no doubt that Nixon’s efforts as a return specialist give the team a better chance of achieving that goal.