Last season, Matthew Golden earned plenty of hype thanks to a blazing-fast 40-yard dash and first-round draft capital that sent him to the Green Bay Packers. He didn’t live up to expectations as a rookie, but the path to fantasy football relevance is clearer after his first game of year two.
After a successful debut in his sophomore season, is the Matthew Golden fantasy breakout finally here, or is it just a Week 1 mirage?
Matthew Golden fantasy outlook
In 2025, Matthew Golden entered the NFL as the No. 23 pick in the draft’s first round. There was plenty of hype following a combine that saw him run a scorching 4.29 40-yard dash, propelling him up boards everywhere. However, some people may have jumped the gun given a lack of high-end collegiate production in his prospect profile. Plus, the situation in Green Bay was far from ideal – the team preferred a run-heavy game plan with a crowded wide receiver room that made it difficult for the rookie to stand out.
In the end, Golden appeared in 14 games amidst a season abbreviated by injury. He saw just 44 targets and caught 29 of them for 361 yards, failing to find the end zone even once. With just 5.0 FPPG in PPR formats, he was far from a starter-worthy option in fantasy football lineups, too. He recorded just three weeks of double-digit fantasy points with a high mark of 13.2, catching no more than five passes in any game and never seeing more than six targets.
That’s part of what makes Golden’s sophomore debut so interesting. In Week 1 of the 2026 campaign, he set new single-game career highs in targets, receptions and yardage – he brought in six of his 12 looks for 95 yards. The 15.5 PPR points he produced also marked a new career best, though he’s still yet to score his first NFL touchdown. Could that performance be an indicator that he’s on the upswing moving forward?
It’s a dangerous proposition to glean much from a one-game sample, but there were signs in Week 1 that suggested Golden could potentially ascend in year two. Last season, the wideout saw no greater than a 73% snap share and only eclipsed the 60% mark in four of his 14 contests, finishing below even 50% seven times. Getting Golden onto the field may not have been the easiest task in a position room that also included Christian Watson, Romeo Doubs, Jayden Reed (when healthy) and Dontayvion Wicks. However, Golden recorded a healthy 82% snap share in Week 1, a career high. That aligns with how the Packers have consolidated their pass-catching corps into three clear wideouts plus tight end Tucker Kraft, with Doubs and Wicks now on new teams.
The usage is also encouraging for Golden moving forward. Believe it or not, the second-year starter actually paced all Packers players with 40 routes run in Week 1. He saw two more routes than Watson and 11 more than Reed. In the context of his 56 total snaps, Golden ran a route on 71.4% of the plays he was in for this past Sunday. His 12 targets were also a team high, four more than the next-closest player. All in all, he commanded a 30% target share on the day with 0.30 targets per route run – close to the elite usage that names like Puka Nacua, Jaxon Smith-Njigba and Amon-Ra St. Brown saw last year as the only players at 0.30 or better in the stat.
Does this mean that Golden is going to blossom into a true WR1 like them? Almost assuredly not. However, he could be showing the first flash of a legitimate breakout if he can stay on the field with a high volume of routes and continue to command the football at a level even a step or two down from what he just showed in the season opener. Green Bay threw more than usual as the team trailed for most of the day, but with Josh Jacobs sidelined indefinitely and a poor offensive line, the offense may be forced to air the ball out at a higher rate than in years past for a bit.
Could Golden settle in as a low-end WR2 if this continues? He certainly could, which would be a breakout in comparison to his rookie campaign. However, it’s probably best to bank on Watson and Kraft emerging as the top targets in this Packers offense for now given the larger sample of production from both. Keep an eye on Golden moving forward, though.
