Jared Goff has an explanation for his awkward ‘slide’ vs. Seahawks

Jared Goff failed at this slide attempt on Sunday, but there’s a reason for it.

Jared Goff isn’t known for his athleticism, speed or agility. As a quarterback, that’s not a big deal. He can still scramble when needed and elude rushers by escaping the pocket, but his sliding could use some work.

He scrambled for 5 yards on Sunday night against the Seahawks, and in an attempt to avoid a big hit, he hit the deck … very awkwardly.

Instead of simply sliding feet-first like his counterpart Russell Wilson so expertly does, Goff attempted a mix of a dive and slide. The result: an ugly fall after his knee stuck in the turf.

Twitter didn’t miss it, either.

At his press conference on Wednesday, Goff explained why he awkwardly dove instead of sliding, and strangely enough, it had to do with a rule change the NFL made recently.

“It was bad, huh?” Goff said, eliciting a laugh from the room. “I’ll tell you what happened. I had forgot that they changed the rule to where if you go forward – it used to be if you dive forward, it’s an extra few yards because you’re not technically sliding. So, I was actually talking about it with Blake (Bortles) last week and I was like, ‘Man, I’m going to start going forward.’ So, sure enough I dive forward and then we watch the film after and they spotted it back where I had slid. And we were like, ‘Oh yeah, they changed the rule.’ I believe It was either this year or last year to diving forward and sliding are now equivalent. So I’ll just keep sliding on my back there.”

Goff is right. As you can see, the officials spotted the ball at the 31-yard line, not the 33- or 34-yard line where his roll ended and he was touched down.

Goff’s dad, Jerry, played six years of professional baseball with the Expos, Pirates and Astros. He saw Goff’s attempted slide, but he didn’t give the quarterback a hard time for it.

“No, He was fine about it. It looked like I tripped, so it wasn’t too bad,” he said.