Jared Goff beat the Buccaneers in Week 6, and he can do it again

The Buccaneers threw everything at Jared Goff in Week 6, and Goff had no problems. Might be time for a different plan in the playoffs.

In the locker room after the Detroit Lions’ 24-23 wild-card win over the Los Angeles Rams, head coach Dan Campbell wanted everyone to know that he was more than fine with the 2021 trade with the Rams that flipped Goff for Matthew Stafford.

There was no question in that game who Campbell trusted to make the final play that sealed the game for his team.

The Lions placed their ultimate faith in Jared Goff, and it absolutely paid off

Now, the Lions are hoping to make it to the NFC Championship game, and they’ll have to beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to do so. Goff will likely be a major component of that equation. When these two teams faced off in Week 6, the Lions ran the ball 22 times… for 40 yards and no touchdowns. Rookie Jahmyr Gibbs was unavailable for that game, and he’ll be ready to go for this one, but it’s not a guarantee that any team will do well against Tampa Bay’s run defense.

Detroit’s 20-6 win was keyed by a defense that frustrated Baler Mayfield over and over, and Goff’s performance. He completed 30 of 44 passes for 353 yards, two touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 107.5. Buccaneers head coach and defensive shot-caller Todd Bowles is great at designing different and effective blitzes, and disguised coverages, but Goff had no issue with any of it. Perhaps more than any other game this season, this one showed how far Goff has come as a quarterback from a mental perspective.

In that game, Bowles sent five-man rushes on 17 of Goff’s 44 attempts, and he completed 13 of those passes for 9.2 yards per attempt, and 3.7 average yards of separation for his receivers. This 27-yard pass to receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown at the start of the fourth quarter featured two staples of the Lions’ passing game — under-center play-action, and heavy personnel — in this case, two tight ends. This was a five-man rush as opposed to a blitz, but the Bucs also switched from a single-high look to Cover-6, and Goff had no issue whatsoever with that. St. Brown perfectly exposed the void in that coverage switch.

Goff’s 45-yard touchdown pass to receiver Jameson Williams with 3:27 left in the third quarter was another example of Goff’s acuity against a complex defense.

This was a zone exchange in which edge-rusher Joe Tryon-Shoyinka dropped into flat coverage, and safety Christian Izien rushed from the second level on the other side. At the same time, the Buccaneers showed a nebulous coverage look that resembled Cover-4 to a point, but flipped to Cover-3 post-snap. Safety Antoine Winfield Jr. came down to cover receiver Josh Reynolds, making Ryan Neal the deep-third defender.

The Lions had a great plan for either coverage with a flood concept out of trips right in which Reynolds, Jameson Williams, and Amon-Ra St. Brown worked all three levels of the field with out-breaking routes. Williams had Neal beaten on the deep route, cornerback Carlton Davis was confused as to which receiver to cover, and that’s one way to get yourself a 45-yard score.

In this week’s “Xs and Os with Greg Cosell and Doug Farrar,” the guys go deeper on what Goff did to the Bucs in Week 6, and why Todd Bowles might want to investigate different parts of his playbook.

You can watch this week’s episode of “The Xs and Os,” featuring all the most important matchups of the divisional round, right here:

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