RP Clips: Have We Found Some Gold-en Green Bay?

Matt Harmon (0:03)

James Koh and Matt Harmon.

James Koh (0:06)

All right, a player that you wrote about this week was Matthew Golden there in Green Bay. You watched his role there in week number one. Matt, tell the listeners, you know, what are some takeaways that you saw from the second year man in Green Bay?

Matt Harmon (0:20)

Yeah, I think Matthew Golden, so he ends up being the first player I charted from the 2026 NFL season, because you go in and you look at the usage just first off right off the bat. He was on the field a ton. He ran 87% of the routes in week number one. He was targeted on 30% of his routes. And so again, it's like, wow, he actually ended up leading the Packers in targets, 12 targets, six catches. And it was like, okay, we got to see what's going on with Matthew Golden here because he was a player that if you didn't read my stuff on him in the off season, I kind of called myself like a Matthew Golden centrist because, which I know you will find no surprise, James, come down in the middle of the aisle on Matthew Golden. And I think that was the correct take because his prospect profile was good, still kind of mixed. You know, I had him behind guys like Tetero McMillan and Mecca Ibuka and Luther Burden, but still like very much worth drafting in the late first, you know, late first round range.

There are guys in his tier in the stacked rankings that I've really, really liked over the years. So Matthew Golden, good, still mixed profile and then his rookie season was decidedly mixed. You know, it was said this a lot during the off season. It's like, it wasn't so, it was certainly not so bad that I'm like, oh, this guy's a bust, he's hopeless. But it wasn't so good that I was like, man, they really screwed up by not getting Matthew Golden involved. So he was really interesting coming into the season for me, had heard really good things about Matthew Golden in training camp. My colleague, Jorie Epstein, actually at Yahoo, she went to Packers training camp. I talked to her about this for my show, that she went to Packers training camp, talked to Jordan Love, did a story on Matthew Golden, and the practice that she was at, like Matthew Golden was getting peppered the football over and over again. And Jordan Love said to Jorie, she asked him, are you trying to get him the ball to build up his confidence? And she said that Jordan Love told her, no, the ball is finding him because I'm going through my reeds and he's getting separation.

That is demanding the target. So for me, I was like, oh, this is really interesting. And then you think about the role that he's going to play in this offense. You remember Jordan Love said to, I can't remember, I think it was an NFL Network interview. He said, Matthew now is established as our ex-receiver in the offense, and your good friend Matt LaFleur was like, oh, that's news to me, I didn't know about that.

Well, guess what, Jordan Love was not lying. You go into this week one film, I read about this in the Notebook, he lined up outside on 91% of his snaps, and he was on the ball for 77%.

There are definitely reps to Matt LaFleur's point where he's off the ball and moving around, or he's kind of off the ball outside in a condensed look with another receiver stacked on somebody. That's going to happen in this offense. Nobody's like pure X, pure Z, any of that stuff. There's a lot of motion to moving around. But nominally, Golden absolutely was the outside on ball receiver. And that is our first big departure, James, from what we saw last season with Matthew Golden as a rookie where he was kind of, I think he also was kind of like an injury replacement for Jaden Reid who got hurt very early on. He ended up playing 38% of his sample snaps in the slot. He was in the backfield for 7.7%. It's like a motion option, 50-50 on ball, off ball as a rookie. And I don't know, that did not suit his skill set really at all, especially based on who he was as a prospect where he was like a vertical receiver.

James Koh (3:58)

Yeah, 12 targets, six grabs, 95 yards, a long of 42

I wanted to ask you how much of this is going up against a Vikings defense that is hyper aggressive. Obviously, they're going to get after you. They're going to use a lot of man coverage here. Did you see some staying power here with Matthew Golden?