Matthew Golden forcing us to reset expectations for his rookie season with the Green Bay Packers

Matthew Golden forcing us to reset expectations for his rookie season with the Green Bay Packers

The first two days of training camp are making me have to reccalibrate expectations for first round pick Matthew Golden in 2025. You are Locked on Packers, your daily Green Bay Packers podcast, part of the locked on podcast network. Your team every day. [Music] You were locked on Packers. part of the Locked on Podcast Network, your team every day. I’m Peter Bowski and I cover the Packers for the Leap, a newsletter I would love for you to subscribe to. Follow me on Twitter, peter_bukowski. Follow the podcast on Twitter, Locked on Packers. Like us on Facebook, subscribe to the podcast, iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, wherever you find podcasts, you will find Locked on Packers, the number one Packers podcast on the internet and the show for fans who know what happened. They want to know why and how. Thanks to everyone who makes Locked on Packers their first listen every day. We hope you like starting your day with us as much as we like starting our day with you. Today’s episode brought to you by our friends at Game Time. Download the Game Time app, create an account, and use code locked on NFL for $20 off your first ticket purchase. We overreacted last week in a in a light-hearted way. And then more things have happened. No, not a lot more, right? But they they unlike during the season, they practiced over the weekend. And I just have gotten to the point already where I have had to rethink my expectations for Matthew Golden. And part of that is because my expectations were mostly that uh he would play the protoch Christian Watson role. Think Christian Watson, his rookie season early in the year where it’s a lot of jet sweeps. It’s a lot of pre- snap motion where he’s just an influence player. It’s a lot of clear out routes and then some design things here or there, but he was not a big part of the offense. That was a Romeo Dobs offense. That was an Alen Lazard offense. It was an Aaron Jones offense. It was not until it had to be because he was just so good. A Christian Watson offense. I guess I’m I’m not going to be surprised if that playbook gets followed to a tea, but they already seem to want to do more with Matthew Golden. The fact that they are doing some of the gadget stuff, the Jaden Reed stuff. And Matt Lafur has asked about this and he said basically the more guys that uh I can have do that stuff, the better, the harder it is to defend. And remember, um, 2020, Tyler gets hurt and they don’t really have anybody else to do the pre-net motion stuff and the offense suffered because of it. You need guys who can threaten the field horizontally, vertically, everywhere. And you need more than one. It can’t just be Jaden Reed because if Jaden Reed gets hurt or Jaden Reed is banged up, misses a game, or just not 100%, you can’t ex ask him to do all of the schemed up things. Well, like Dantavian Wixs on a Jet sweep just doesn’t have the same juice. Savon Williams, Matthew Golden, those guys can really run. Those guys can can threaten you all over the field. But there’s only been what, four days, five days of practice of of like actual guys out there. And in at least two of them, Matthew Golden has been with the first team offense on the first snap of team drills in 12 personnel, by the way. Two tight ends on the field. If you combine those two things, like it’s one thing to rotate. The Packers rotate, but the first rep is usually the first rep, then what that tells us is a couple different things. One is they expect Matthew Golden to play right away and play a lot. To push compete, to be a primary player in two receiver sets means you are one of the guys. Go back to last off seasonason. Go back to last regular season. We talked about Jaden Reed and for him to take the step, he has to be able to play in two receiver sets. You cannot be a wide receiver one if you can’t be in in two receiver sets. Like Aman Rosen Brown is a slot receiver, but he plays in two receiver sets and he is in the slot, you know, it’s 50% of the time around there. It’s not, you know, 100% of the time or something close to it, which is what it is for Jaden Reed. The only time Jaden Reed is out there is if there are three receivers on the field, basically, or he’s in the back field. And there are plenty of interesting ways that the Packers can use him in the back field, but you’re an 11 personnel. So, it’s different. If Matthew Golden is already ahead of him, then that tells us something about Jaden Reed and what the Packers think Jaden Reed is limited in some ways. Even if he’s a good player, and I think he is a good player, and that they they want if they’re going to let Matthew Golden do some of the Jaden Reed stuff, well, then Jaden Reed’s role in this offense has been subverted. I initially thought of Golden as a a one for one Christian Watson replacement. Not that he would ever be as good as Christian Watson. At least Christian Watson at his peak. I don’t know. I don’t I thought Christian Watson was a better prospect. Christian Watson has not been able to stay healthy. If Matthew Golden is healthy Christian Watson, I think he’s going to be a really good player because I think a healthy Christian Watson is a really good player. But I’m I’m starting to think that the Packers envision more than that. That they’re thinking about a player who can do everything for them and and maybe can do in in the way that perhaps Jaden Reed can’t. Last year, Jason Hershorn and our pile from the Leap um wrote about it a couple months or a couple weeks in, even without Jordan Love. You saw everything from Jaden Reed. They were running the real concepts for him, like not just not just the gadget stuff, which they were also doing, but then they’re they’re letting him be not just an influence player, but the main target on their base concepts. That kind of stuff tells you they want you to be a driver of their offense. Well, if Matthew Golden is going to take your place in some of the gadget stuff and he can be a receiver on the field in two receiver sets, that’s just like 25 30% of snaps that are out the door for Jaden Reed in base personnel. And then if he’s going to be the motion player in those situations, are are you then lining up Jaden Reed on the outside because you don’t think he can be an outside receiver? That’s why he’s not out there in two receiver sets. Now maybe it’s different. You have Matthew Golden come in motion and and you know you you can stack Golden and Reed to a side. Those sorts of things. But part of the reason you want to protect Jaden Reed is you want to keep him off press coverage. And so that’s just like that’s a hindrance to his success Jaden Reed. If they think Matthew Golden can do everything, then I have to start thinking and and the collective, we have to start thinking about Golden doing more than just the Christian Watson stuff, affecting more than just Christian Watson’s role on this team, but also if he’s affecting Jaden Reed’s role in this team, that mean that means he could be the primary offensive playmaker in this passing game sooner than later. And that was not something I was prepared for, at least in year one. I mean, you if you draft a guy in the first round, you think he can be that eventually. I don’t think the Packers drafted him thinking he would or could be that in year one. Or at least I didn’t think that. I’m starting to wonder about that. And I I mean I I know it’s only been a couple days here, but I think relative to my expectations, which were I would say muted enthusiasm because I thought his his skill set worked for what they wanted and what they needed, but I felt like there was more to work on there. It was more about how I felt about him as a player, as a prospect. But all that matters is what the Packers think of him as a player and as a prospect. And clearly they think he can do everything. And if they think he can do everything like now, this might be his offense. Like this, it might be a replay of 2022 where we look up in week 10 and the passing game runs efficiently because the ball goes to Matthew Golden and goes to Matthew Golden a lot. That that’s what we’re talking about here. Now, this can all change when the pads come on. And the pads are coming on. I want to talk about two players for whom this period of training camp is essential because the Packers ceiling this season rests squarely on the two very broad sets of shoulders that we’re going to talk about. That’s next on Locked on Packers. This episode is presented by Yahoo Fantasy. Fantasy football is back. Fire up the group chats. Get your draft board ready and buckle up with a season filled with breakouts, busts, and all the overreactions we all live for. It’s all going down on Yahoo Fantasy. This year, me and Locked on Packers are playing locked on Yahoo Fantasy. Okay, not really. But yeah, Yahoo Fantasy is the place to be. You should be there, too, if you’re a first-time or a veteran making your millionth league. To celebrate 28 years of fantasy greatness, Yahoo Fantasy is dropping 28 big new features over 28 days, giving you more ways to play, more ways to draft, and more ways to win. It all begins August 4th. Stay tuned and get started by creating or joining a Yahoo Fantasy Football League at yahoo fantasy.com/lockdon NFL. I just have to go to my app on my phone. It’s the same app I’ve been using for as long as I’ve had a phone basically because I’ve really only ever used Yahoo Fantasy. It’s the fantasy football app. yahoo fantasy.com/lockon NFL and let’s make this fantasy season the best one yet. I wrote about Jordan Morgan last week. He is the player along with Lucas Vaness that needs these padded practices to go well more than anybody else. There have been some flashes from Lucas Vaness. You see the reports. Oh, pressure from Vaness. And it’s hard in practice because you don’t know what’s going to be a sack. They let these plays go beyond what would normally be because you can’t hit the quarterback. Guys aren’t in pads. So, practices can be tough. We’ll see in one-on- ones. We’ll see in joint practices. These two guys, we talked about the players who can set the ceiling for this Packers team. Lucas Vaness taking that step because he is the starter now. Like last year, second half of the year, it was Kingsley Bar. As of right now, everything we’ve seen so far coming into this season, the spring work, the the offseason work, this is Lucas Vanessa’s job opposite Rashawn Garry. You’ve got this interior group, this deep group of interior pass rushers with Kenny Clark and Devonte Wyatt and Carl Brooks and Kobe Wooden and and this this new group of defensive tackles, Warren Brinson and um Nazir Stackhouse, the rookies from Georgia. You got Kobe Wooden in there. Vaness is the guy when the pads come on, you want to see him, if not dominate, look like the kind of player who physically is at a different level because his game is physicality. I don’t I don’t want to hear I don’t want to see on tape speed moves. I don’t I want to see better hand placement. I want to see a deeper reservoir of pass rush moves, but I want to see a player whose physical tools finally translate onto the field because he is very much the ultimate potential player. Freak freak athletic gifts at his size. Like guys with his athletic ability at his size just mostly do not exist. And I remember Mike Smith, the outside linebacker’s coach, said this of Rashawn Garry. Give me a really good athlete who cares and I will give you a really good football player because they will work at it. They will try and get better and eventually it will just happen. Now, does he have, you know, the right mentality? Does he have the right mindset? Does he have the right um the the right comportment on the field. Does he have the right temperament on the field? I I want all of my defenders in the front to be like Rashan Gary. Brash, talking, playing 100 miles an hour at all times, hair on fire. That’s what I want. Is Lucas Vanessa? I don’t know. But I want to see the physicality translate. You look at him, the name Hercules is almost a curse for Lucas Vaness because he is so overwhelmingly impressive as someone coming off the bus. And then on the field you go, I would like to see it. I would like to see the strength. I would like to see you convert speed to power. I would like to see you run through someone’s chest. and we just don’t often enough. And that’s what I want to see. I want to see that part of his because everything else will flow off of that. He is a power rusher. So, let’s see it. There’s been some signs. I’ve been adamant all off season that we will know early. Like we might know as early as this week if if the reports are coming, hey, this guy looks different when the he’s he’s going up against Rasheed Walker and Zack Tom in these drills and he’s winning. That is what you want to hear. Now, what about Jordan Morgan? He’s going up against Jordan Morgan and winning. We’ll see. We don’t know if Jordan Morgan is any good. I wrote a a long piece on Friday for the leap, a newsletter I would love for you to subscribe to. I went back and watched every Jordan Morgan snap and came away more convinced than ever that he’s a guard. He has played more snaps at guard it seems like um than in at tackle. I mentioned in the piece that if you listen to the words from Brian Buddin and Matt Laflur, it sounds like their assumption is that even though he is technically competing at left tackle, they think he’s probably a guard or that’s where his best chance to win is, that was true last year in terms of what his best chance to win. And that was when Rasheed Walker was a less proven player. I think this is the proverbial let him prove he can’t. Can he play left tackle? Let’s see if he can. And if he can prove he can play left tackle, then I think he has a shot to win that job. I think more likely though, he will prove he can’t play left tackle, but that he can be a very good guard, which is what I think and have always thought about him as a player. And I came away even more impressed than I thought I would be on second watch in what he showed in the run game. the power, the tenacity, like that that that stuff. And that’s in that’s in the report. I went back and read my report on Jordan Morgan. He he plays with physicality. I thought that he did a good job over the course of the season. Um, one of my favorite things to watch offensive linemen do in the run game especially, is to get a piece of someone to help on a double at the line, climb, and hit a secondary target. So, the reason that I like that is because you have to have spatial awareness of where you where where not just you are, but where your first assignment is. Okay, what’s happening? And I’m probably on the move, right? I’m probably running one direction or another. Running is relative, right? But moving. Can I help effectively? Number one, it’s got to be effective help. Just having your arm is not effective. It needs to be effective help. And then getting your eyes up field to find that guy that you’re supposed to take out. There are a number of plays where you watch him climb to the second level, find a linebacker, and just detonate. Or there’s there was a play where he is working a double off a snap and he comes back across as a linebacker flashes and buries that guy and it breaks a big game for Josh Jacobs in the run game. He is a guard and it is as I wrote in the piece a reflection of a mentality change that the Packers are trying to put together here. They are trying to say we want to be bigger. We want to be batter and and we want to come down and punch you in the freaking face. You are going to feel it when you play the Green Bay Packers. You are going to wake up Monday morning and say, “Damn, that’s what they want.” And Jordan Morgan can be a part of that. And and the pass rush uh pass protection stuff, excuse me, is a work in progress. you see some of the flaws that that I I believed anyway in my evaluation that you needed to move him to guard because his lateral burst is just not what you need it to be, especially at left tackle. The blind side is just it’s a little tougher because you you have to be better and he’ll get beat inside. It just that stuff can’t happen. When he’s late and he’s he can be late sometimes, catch a little too much. That’s when he struggles. Like there’s a rep where Jaylen Carter gets in on him and it’s just over. Now Jaylen Carter is one of the best in the business and it’s his first game and all that stuff is true, but he hasn’t played that much. That’s the other problem. So now you’re crossraining him at tackle and guard. And I I just I worry that the Packers have a little bit too much dip on their chip with this. Why are you messing around with the tackle thing? He’s just not a tackle. So, let him play guard. Let him work at guard. Let him rep at guard. Let him compete hard at right guard. And and then see what happens. You drafted Anthony Belton for a reason. you sign Zack Tom. So either the plan for Anthony Belton is to be the left tackle of the future or to play guard and he doesn’t seem to be cross trainining the same way Jordan Morgan did. Certainly the same way that that Morgan played everywhere across the offensive line. They think he’s capable of doing that. That tells you something about what they think about him as a player. They did that with Elton Jenkins. Like they and they are right about this stuff, right? Like if there is a position where I am going to say when it comes to especially young player evaluation, pre-draft player development, far be it for me because they are they are the best in the league and have been for 20 years basically at just being an offensive line factory with this stuff. But it seems to me that they are just they’re trying to get a little too cute with this one. And I hope it doesn’t hurt him. I really do. Now, there is a bigname player who has recently become available. Could the Packers be interested? That’s next on Locked on Packers. We’ve all been there. Logging on early and waiting forever for concert tickets to go on sale, only to lose your spot for a show you’ve been dying to see. Live music should be about making memories, not dealing with the stress of ticket shopping. That’s where game time comes in. I just saw Chris Stapleton over the weekend. It was incredible. I have to say it was really and and about the music, not about didn’t you didn’t need any pyrochnics. You didn’t need cute stories in between every song. No. How about How about I just play music for two and a half hours? Really good music. And and just like be killer. Yeah. Would you like to go to a concert like that? Yeah, Game Time wants to get you there. And you can save up to 60% off with their killer last minute deals. Plus, with Game Time, the price you see is the price you pay. No hidden fees. Take the guesswork out of buying concerts and show tickets with Game Time. Download the Game Time app, create an account, and use code locked on NFL for $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply. Again, create an account and redeem code locked on NFL for $20 off. Download the Game Time app today. Last minute tickets, the lowest price guaranteed. Thanks for making locked on Packers your first listen today. For your second listen, check out Locked on Bets. It’s back, baby. Betting experts Lee Sterling and Kevin Rogers have daily MLB locks and can’t miss football futures. Find Locked on Bets on YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts. A very weird situation in Las Vegas has led to the Raiders moving on from Christian Wilkins, who they signed a year ago, to a top of market deal. They are now attempting to void the guarantees in that deal, which is why players like that after you sign a big contract don’t get cut because you owe them money. The guaranteed money is guaranteed. Except it’s not. At first, the reporting was they didn’t like the way that he rehabbed from his foot injury. And so you what you can say is you were you were in breach of contract. I think that would be a tough sell, but they were going to try it. And I think my guess is uh that they uh they tried that as a trial balloon. It did not go over great. And so now we got this secondary reporting that there was an incident with a player, a weird incident with a player. This is what the reporting is. There’s been some secondary reporting that, you know, Christian was just playing around. That makes me nervous about what what the situation actually was. Um, I was just joking or I was just I was just playing around from a grown man in a locker room. Not not always what you want to hear in these situations. Again, that makes me nervous and I don’t want to speculate about what it could have been. I don’t know if that’s just ass covering or what. If that’s just like, well, this other thing it doesn’t seem like it’s going to work. let’s try and make it seem like we uh are moving on because he’s a problem to the team and in the locker room and so we should be allowed to get compensation for this. We’re going to try and save money. The Raiders um especially Mark Davis in particular um they can be penny pinchers at times and if you’re going to move on from a guy like this, you’re going to have to pay him a lot of money, take out a lot of dead cap. They don’t want to do that. the whatever the issue is has to check out. Of course, you have to make sure that this was not something bad bad. Uh but Christian Wilkins is a really good football player. He always plays. He is one of the most disruptive and uh unique interior defenders in the league. He’s not a special pass rusher. not not someone that’s going to like win you defensive player of the year or be some super high sack guy, but he is going to make a million tackles like some there’s some like Linball Joseph in his game, some snacks Harrison in his game where it’s just like he’s he’s going to be there all the time impacting the game and you’d like to have that guy on your team. I think he immediately becomes the best interior player on the team. And maybe maybe the perfect running mate for Rashawn Gary in terms of having the interior, not Kenny Clark if Kenny Clark is healthy. But then you imagine you can put Kenny Clark and Christian Wilkins next to each other. That was sort of the point of Dvonte Wyatt, but Dvonte Wyatt has not become Christian Wilkins. Well, if you wanted Dvonte Wyatt to become Christian Wilkins, why not just go get Christian Wilkins? And the Packers have the salary cap money to do it. that Zack Tom contract which we talked about last week, it is not going to be prohibitive this season in terms of cost. They have cap space. Now, how this shakes out with the contract and the NFL PA, which is dealing with its own stuff right now, if you’re not up to date on that story, like this is not really the the venue for it, but like go go seek that out because there is some wild stuff in in all of that. But if this can get adjudicated in a way that Christian Wilkins gets money, uh, that’s interesting because he could sign in Green Bay for very little. And there aren’t that many teams, if he’s not going to sign for very little, if he’s going to sign an actual free agent deal, there aren’t that many teams that that could afford what he’s theoretically worth. Now, again, there are these questions about what’s going on. And and again, the behind the scenes stuff is going to have to check out. You’re going to have to get character reports back. Um, unfortunately, Rich Baceia was not in Vegas uh to give a report on this. Josh Jacobs was not in Vegas to give a report on this. Um, so that it’s hard to to really um know. I guess Nate Hobbs was there last year, so he could give you some insight on this. Um, but this is this is a very weird situation. And if you’re going to be a player like this, don’t you want to go to a good situation? Don’t you want to go win? He went to get his money. He got some of it. We don’t know what they’re going to what they’re going to be able to recoup and what they’re able to not recoup. But I I assume there’s still going to be a market for Christian Wilkins. If he wants to win, it’s hard to imagine there’s going to be a better situation for him than Green Bay. The question is, what is the Packers appetite for that? What is their appetite for risk in all of this? How much information can they gather in terms of due diligence? This is a this is a thorny, naughty thing. The Packers have generally stayed away from this kinds of stuff. But I I will say this, and I’ve I’ve joked and and gone back and forth with and argued with our pal Wendel Fera about this, the Howie Roseman stuff. It’s exactly the kind of player Howie Roseman signs to a one-year $15 million deal a week before the season and he plays great and everyone goes, “How’s done it again?” Why? If you’re the Packers and you believe in your culture and you believe in your locker room and the strength of it, why not bring someone like this in? Because the the football player, you you need you need guys. You ultimately need to have enough talent. You can’t just win on guile and coaching. It’s not enough. You need the players. This would be a filled tilting player who could be the difference in being a Super Bowl contender. Now they have some other players who could get better and help them take that step and all that stuff. Why not add a proven talent to your team? Again, assuming that the, you know, the personality stuff, the offfield stuff checks out. It’s at least worth exploring. This is this is the kind of opportunity that, you know, it it would be like if the Bengals were just like, “All right, actually, Trey Hendrickson, we’re just going to cut you.” It’s not quite to that level because Trey has been a more productive pass rusher. But this is a crazy situation and we’ll see if the Packers can get involved. We’ll see if they will. History says they won’t. Doesn’t mean doesn’t mean you can’t dream. All right, back tomorrow. Much more as the Packers move through training camp. Plenty to talk about here as we move through all of it. Um the pads come on, the fun begins. So follow me on the social medias. Um follow the podcast on the social media wherever you get podcasts. Subscribe wherever you find podcasts. Wherever you listen to podcasts, subscribe over on our YouTube page so you can stay locked on Packers.

It’s only been a handful of practices for Matthew Golden, but the way he’s being used by the Packers in training camp suggests the expectations have to be raised for what he can do this year. Plus, the two players who can most benefit from the pads coming on this week.

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Peter Bukowski, co-founder of The Leap, brings you a daily look at the Green Bay Packers year round with Locked On Packers! Go beyond the latest injury news into what you’re seeing on the field, how it works, and how it might change with new players or against a division rival. It’s the podcast for fans who know what happened, they want to know why and how!

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