Big Blue View
Could Golden be the best receiver to come out of this draft?
There’s a perception that the 2025 NFL Draft has a weak wide receiver class.
The reality, however, is that this year’s draft has a good and talented group of receivers, but they have the misfortune of following a fantastically deep and talented class is last year’s draft. The 2025 receiving class has a diverse set of players with a huge variety of traits and skill sets. There might not be many “universal” fits, but this draft will produce plenty of starters.
Texas receiver Matthew Golden has been flying a bit under the radar and has been overlooked by the public at large. However, he’s a great athlete as well as a very savvy technician. That’s a combination of traits that typically leads to a rookie hitting the ground running and having an impact right away.
The New York Giants might not need to draft a receiver early, but there’s a possibility that Golden could land with a rival. And with that in mind, he’s definitely worth looking at.
Prospect: Matthew Golden (2)
Games Watched: vs. Michigan (2024), vs. Oklahoma (2024), vs. Georgia (2024), vs. Texas A&M (2024)
Best traits
Matthew Golden is a highly athletic, savvy, and competitive receiver prospect.
He has a compact, powerful build with good thickness in his upper and lower halves. That’s reflected in some remarkably springy athleticism, and Golden is quick, agile, and fast. He is one of the fastest players in this year’s draft class, turning in a 4.29-second 40-yard dash. He also has very good agility and movement skills as well as acceleration.
That quickness and agility allows Golden to cut sharply and suddenly, as well as get off the line efficiently against tight coverage.
He combines his athletic traits with impressively savvy route running, and Golden treats every part of his route as a weapon. He easily discards physical jams, bends his stem to create room, plays with his stride length and frequency to throw off defenders’ timing, and understands how to run his routes into defenders’ chests before breaking back to the ball.
Golden is also a highly competitive receiver. He fights through tight coverage, is willing to lay his body on the line to make a catch, and gets after defenders as a blocker. He didn’t even shy away from blocking Georgia EDGE Mykell Williams when Texas played Georgia. He’s a dangerous runner with the ball, combining his athleticism with his toughness and play strength to exploit space or run through arm tackles.
Finally, Golden is unselfish as a teammate. Golden is quick to transition from receiver to blocker, and does what he has to in order to help his teammates. Likewise, he runs every route as though he’s expecting the ball, drawing coverage or creating traffic to slow defenders.
Worst traits
There are two main issues...
