There are a bunch of people who didn’t like Matthew Golden right out of college. You can find them online, but here’s one.
And in the Green Bay Packers’ section of this year’s FTN Almanac written (You should buy it, it’s great!) by Bryan Knowles, Golden is a featured player. The preview as a whole is very good and I think Knowles is “tough-but-fair,” and that FTN’s statistical projection for Green Bay makes sense. But the Matthew Golden stuff is starting to bug me partially because I don’t actually think Golden is that important to how the team’s offense performs in the first place, and partially because there is a TON of statistical slight-of-hand in every piece I read about Golden. Take this post for instance.
Golden had 987 yards in his final year at Texas at the age of 21. Would you think differently had he gained an additional 13 yards? Should you? Julio Jones didn’t eclipse 1,000 yards until his third year at Alabama when he went for 1,133, but that was a long time ago. More recently Emeka Egbuka hit 1,000 in two out of four seasons in college with modest 1,151 and 1,011 totals, and had a 515 in between them, and he’s a year older than Golden. Is that better because he did it twice in four years instead of once in three? OR worse because he’s older? I honestly don’t know.
But, more importantly, you should never trust anything you read on the internet as Chris Olave, drafted 11th overall by the Saints in 2022, never had a 1,000-yard season over four seasons in college at Ohio State, topping out in his senior season with 936 yards on 65 receptions.
Which brings us back to Knowles (and a few friends), who among many things, noted that there are only six first round receivers to play less than Golden in their first years without hitting the PUP or IL, captured here by Scott Spratt:
Now, while this is all technically correct (the best kind of correct), there are a bunch of problems with it! Golden may not have hit the IL, but he was hurt quite a lot. He suffered lingering shoulder and wrist issues and missed three games (Eagles, Vikings, and Lions) as a result. And he was impacted by these injuries during several weeks while playing. It’s not really fair to portray Golden as having been fully healthy with limited production. He was not, and his totals likely would have been much higher had he not been injured. (If you perform a simple proration, a fully healthy Golden would have hit 549 snaps and 438 yards.)
And the group around 549 snaps looks quite a bit better, if not great. Hollywood Brown had 562. Brandin Cooks had 533. Chris Olave had 607. And while we’re on the subject of using artificial cutoffs, the first round is also pretty arbitrary, and Golden was a pretty late first-rounder, having been taken 23rd. If we shift the group just a bit to the right, from pick 16 of the first to pick 48 overall in the second, we get Luther Burden (who appears to be awesome but only had 402 snaps), Alshon Jeffrey (431), Christian Watson (507, who was drafted 34th overall), and Christian Kirk (542).
There is also the perennial Packer problem of their glacially slow pace on offense. Green Bay’s offense is very slow, and very run heavy, and as a result they only attempted 489 passes last season, 27th in the league. The Bears and 49ers, who tied for 10th, attempted 574 passes. No Packer receiver has eclipsed 1,000 yards since Davante Adams in 2021 with 1,553 on 169 targets, which was over 100 targets more than second-place Aaron Jones with 65. And not only has no receiver eclipsed 1,000 yards, no receiver has even eclipsed 900 yards! The highest receiving total for any Packer since Adams is Jayden Reed’s 857 in 2024. Back in 2021, peak Davante was MUCH better than second-best receiver Allen Lazard. Over the last several seasons, it’s been an open question as to whether the best Packer receiver is Christian Watson, or Romeo Doubs, Or Jayden Reed, to say nothing of Tucker Kraft. Heck, Dontayvion Wicks led this team in targets in 2024!
In the post-Davante era, the wide receivers have all been pretty good (if flawed). Last season (including qualifying TEs and WRs only, not RBs), the Packers had five pass-catchers with a PFF grade over 70. New England also had five, Indy had four, and no other team had more than three. When a team possesses a slow offense and quality depth at receiver, it’s simply harder to grab target share than it is when you’re Tet McMillan on the Panthers. And speaking of the Panthers, let’s return to that extremely slow pace.
The Packers had 166 offensive drives last season, ahead of only the Panthers and Commanders who had 165. The average Packer drive took 3:03, sixth-longest in the league. Their pace of play is, frankly, a problem, and could be the subject of an entire additional post, but it’s not Matthew Golden’s problem or fault. And so again, any decent proration (to a league-neutral pace) would kick him up just a bit further.
Back to College
It’s true that one of the better indicators of pro success is volume in college, especially at a young age, and that Golden didn’t really have massive volume. But volume by itself isn’t always that valuable. A running back catching 10 balls at five yards a clip is less valuable than a deep threat catching three balls for sixty yards (most of the time, there is some nuance there). However, volume CAN be important as it can serve as a proxy for what the coaching staff (and quarterback) thought of a player. And here, again, there is some nuance required when discussing volume at Texas in the NIL era where talent is increasingly concentrated in fewer schools.
First of all, Golden’s 83 targets actually DID lead the Longhorns in 2024, although tight end Gunnar Helm caught two more passes overall. Golden WAS getting volume. But it’s true that he probably should have gotten more. Part of the issue is that Steve Sarkisian ran a deep bench where five different receivers caught at least 23 balls (including the also-talented but troubled Isaiah Bond). And part of the problem for Golden was simply that Quinn Ewers just didn’t throw a great deep ball.
But despite all the headwinds, he was still super productive on a per play basis. My SiYAA statistic (a very simple version of FTN’s DYAR that essentially answers the question “given your volume, were you efficient?”), Golden was the 12th most efficient receiver in college football his final year with 393 yards above average. (Jeremiah Smith led the league with 661, that guy is amazing.)
Conclusion
I don’t think Golden is without fault. I think any honest assessment should mention that he’s a poor fit specifically for the Packers because of his size, as they ask their receivers to block frequently and prefer larger outside receivers as a result. He’s potentially redundant with Jayden Reed on the team, and that may be as big a problem as anything. As a smaller receiver, he is also more likely suffer nagging injuries, as he and Jayden Reed showed last season.
But Golden is also not some obvious bust. He had excellent hands in college, a trait that was sorely lacking among the Packer receivers last year. He’s also extremely fast, a viable deep threat in a big play offense, and in the Packers’ playoff loss last season, he was both involved and excellent. The Packers have also been quite good at leveraging their receivers’ specific talents for specific roles, even when they’re not well-rounded,
However, going back to the FTN Almanac, Golden is mentioned 22 times in the Packer write-up. Tucker Kraft (3) and Christian Watson (2) are mentioned a combined five times. Christian Watson finished the 2025 season first in FTN’s signature stat, DVOA (35.7% above average) while Kraft had an almost-as-impressive 31.7% in his shortened season. In the volume-adjusted DYAR, Watson still finished 11th despite missing a major chunk of the season. Not focusing on these two as the primary drivers of the offense is just weird. Golden could take a big step forward, become an extremely productive receiver, and still be behind Watson, Kraft, and Reed in the pecking order, because those guys are all pretty good!
The focal points of the 2026 Packer offense will almost certainly be Watson and Kraft. Golden is absolutely important for depth purposes, but any development of contribution from him this year is mostly just icing.