Could Matthew Golden be the Green Bay Packers' WR1 as a rookie?

Matthew Golden has taken advantage of his opportunities early in camp and is turning heads with his dynamic playmaking. Can he lead this passing offense right away?

Green Bay Packers fans and media aren’t used to this.

The team hadn’t drafted a receiver in the first round in a quarter century. Matthew Golden, standing out the way he has through less than a week of training camp, has no modern precedent at the position in Green Bay. What’s more, in the Brian Gutekunst era, the deluge of first-round projects kept a natural governor on those opportunities. It’s not that those players didn’t generate excitement with their talent, but they didn’t produce quite like this, so soon. It would have been easy to expect Golden to come to Green Bay, fill in the Christian Watson vertical stretcher role as a rookie, and evolve from there. Now, he has people asking if he can be the team’s go-to receiver from the jump.

Jason wrote on Monday about the tantalizing early returns for the ex-Texas standout. This situation is not unlike what he entered into upon arriving in Austin after transferring from Houston. Isaiah Bond moved over from Alabama and was expected to be the lead dog, but by about midseason, Golden proved to be the more reliable player. By the end of Texas’s run to the National Championship game, Golden was the driver of the passing game and would have posted even better numbers if not for quarterback Quinn Ewers’ inconsistent play.

Brian Gutekunst believes getting up to speed at Texas helped prepare Golden for this moment.

“Certainly the exposure at Texas probably was very helpful for him in his ability to succeed at the end of that season,” Gutekunst said Tuesday.

“I do think at times, the players we’re getting now are a little more accustomed to adjusting quickly just because there’s so much more movement [in college football] and they bounce around a little bit, so the ability to adjust, I think, they’ve had that experience already.”

And if history holds, Golden could overtake Jayden Reed, Romeo Doubs, and Dontayvion Wicks as the lead dog in this passing game sooner rather than later.

“The playmaking ability is there,” Jordan Love said Tuesday after a practice in which Golden again made a slew of dynamic plays, including a 60-yard touchdown on a double-move.