Jared Goff looked like one of the league’s most promising young quarterbacks when he helped the stacked Los Angeles Rams team on their journey to Super Bowl LII. They ultimately fell short to the Tom Brady-led New England Patriots, but the fans had hope for their young QB and coach.
Flash forward to 2022, and Jared Goff finds himself in year two with the Detroit Lions, and on a pretty expensive contract compared to his recent production. Although he hasn’t been who he was in 2018, the 2016 first overall pick clearly had enough talent to get him a major contract and be the first player taken off the board.
Goff is essentially in a contract year, as cutting Goff this year would see a $41m dead cap hit, with a loss of $10m in cap space right now. The Lions would create $20 million in cap space by simply waiting a year. That logic therefore would assume Goff needs to have a season worth $20 million if he wants to play out his contract in Detroit, which would keep him here for two more seasons. But is it over for the 27-year-old, who had a fairly average season (some would say below-average) posting a stat line of 3,245 Yds, with 19 touchdowns to 8 interceptions?
It might not be. As it’s a contract season, and year two in a system you can be optimistically educated as typically there is a natural bump in any year. On top of that, Goff has a solid offensive line and a running back with major dual-threat capabilities in D’Andre Swift. He also saw rookie WR Amon-Ra St. Brown show major flashes at the end of the year.
The Lions took that success and added to it by bringing in free agent wideout DJ Chark, and trading up for what many believe is the best WR in the rookie class in Jameson Williams. On top of these offensive weapons, the defense is much improved on paper — three out of four of these additions have yet to play a snap — with Aidan Hutchinson, DeShon Elliott, Josh Paschal, and Malcolm Rodriguez.
All of this, in addition to having a good coach, in year two of his program installation, contains the ingredients necessary for Jared Goff to return to his peak Rams form. Or close to it. Goff is still young enough (27) that a turnaround like we saw with Ryan Tannehill could be in order, where the Lions might just find a medium-term starter for their football team that can make them a perennial playoff team.
This season is where the Lions will see what they have in Dan Campbell, but they will especially find out about what they have in Jared Goff. It goes without harping too much that this season is so important for this Lions franchise, as it could lay the blueprint for where this rebuild/renovation/house flip/whatever you want to call it, is for the foreseeable future.
Are the Lions buyers for the next QB that shakes free? Are the Lions looking to trade up, or target a specific QB in the 2023 NFL draft? Or are the Lions content with Jared Goff for at least the next 5 seasons? All of this hinges on what we see from Jared Goff this season, and if he can find his way back to the Jared Goff that went first overall, and led his team to a Super Bowl in his third season.