Packer Central

Watch Golden Moment When Packers Finally Draft Receiver in First Round

The Green Bay Packers finally used a first-round pick on a receiver. The crowd was ecstatic and general manager Brian Gutekunst cracked a great joke.
Bill Huber|
Receiver Matthew Golden of Texas hugs NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell after being selected by the Green Bay Packers.
Receiver Matthew Golden of Texas hugs NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell after being selected by the Green Bay Packers. | Mark Hoffman / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

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Green Bay Packers

GREEN BAY, Wis. – Green Bay Packers President Mark Murphy has a flair for the dramatic.

Murphy, the driving force behind Green Bay hosting the 2025 NFL Draft, got to introduce the Packers’ first-round pick. After saluting the “best owners in the NFL,” Murphy said:

“With the 23rd pick of the 2025 NFL Draft, the 13-time world champion Green Bay Packers, for the first time since in 2002, draft a wide receiver.”

Taking a moment for the crowd to roar, Murphy announced the player’s name.

“Matthew Golden, wide receiver, Texas.”

The crowd erupted, and a lengthy “Go Pack Go” chant filled the void as Golden took the long walk from the Green Room across the street to the stage.

General manager Brian Gutekunst started his news conference by talking about the “electric atmosphere.”

“Obviously, didn’t really know what to expect and, as the day progressed, I felt it building and building,” he said. “What a great, cool moment for Green Bay (and) the Packers. It’s really a cool scene out there and was really fun watching it from the draft room.”

For more than two decades, the Packers picked seemingly every position but receiver. But, with this draft being staged outside Lambeau Field, the stars aligned with Golden filling a huge need.

“Well, I really sent in a different name but Mark just announced what he announced,” Gutekunst joked. “It is what it is. I didn’t think about any of that until he got up there and you saw the crowd, they’re all Green Bay fans, you heard the chants and all that stuff.

“It was really cool but, I’ll just be honest with you, I didn’t think anything like that. We were just watching the board, we had a couple players we were discussing, there were trade opportunities, things like that, so you’re going through all of that and just trying to do what’s right for the Packers. None of that really came before me like that, but afterwards it did. It was just kind of like ‘Wow, that’s pretty neat.’”

The NFL reported an “official” attendance of 205,000.

According to The Sports Geek, which analyzed social media reactions on Thursday night, the Packers received the third-most positive reactions on X.

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Bill Huber
BILL HUBER

Bill Huber, who has covered the Green Bay Packers since 2008, is the publisher of Packers On SI, a Sports Illustrated channel. E-mail: packwriter2002@yahoo.com History: Huber took over Packer Central in August 2019. Twitter: https://twitter.com/BillHuberNFL Background: Huber graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where he played on the football team, in 1995. He worked in newspapers in Reedsburg, Wisconsin Dells and Shawano before working at The Green Bay News-Chronicle and Green Bay Press-Gazette from 1998 through 2008. With The News-Chronicle, he won several awards for his commentaries and page design. In 2008, he took over as editor of Packer Report Magazine, which was founded by Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Nitschke, and PackerReport.com. In 2019, he took over the new Sports Illustrated site Packer Central, which he has grown into one of the largest sites in the Sports Illustrated Media Group.