Matthew Golden

A 15% cut of GB's red-zone carries and targets in his games this season, tenth among 64 receivers with at least 20 of their own, is the number that changed everything for Golden. Last year he touched the ball inside the 20 just four times all season and never got inside the ten. Now he has two touchdowns in five weeks and 15.3 points a game, well clear of the 10.5 pace we set for him before the season over the 13 games we expected.

The deep targets back it up. He is pulling 38% of GB's air yards, twelfth in that same 64-receiver group, and his 2.8 yards of separation on 44 tracked targets says he is winning rather than just collecting volume. This is what a first-round pick's second season looks like when the role finally arrives.

There is a real reason to slow down, though. Receivers in his spot have dropped 0.9 points a game from one year to the next, and GB's target room is crowded with Watson and Jayden Reed ahead of him on the depth chart, so his targets could get squeezed at any point. Last season's 5.0 points a game across 14 weeks is also the shape to remember, and he cleared 15 points in zero of those weeks. If this role holds, he sails past the 137 points we projected for the full season, but the room around him decides how much of that he gets to keep. Five games into 2026 he is doing things he never did as a rookie. Start him in week 6 of 2026 and ride it until the target tree in Green Bay tells us otherwise.