After the trade of Matthew Stafford, everyone knew the Detroit Lions were heading for a rebuild. With a rookie general manager and head coach, expectations are kept to a minimum surrounding the team. Most believe the Lions have a better chance at the number one pick in the draft than securing over five wins this season. With several weak areas around the roster coupled with too many unknowns, this does not come as a surprise to anyone, unless you talk to quarterback Jared Goff.
Goff talked to the media on Monday and came out and said he doesn’t read anything from the media and has tuned out all the outside noise. Instead, he is setting his own expectations for himself and the team instead of allowing outside noise to dictate how the Lions will perform this season.
“It’s a new regime, new staff; they weren’t very good last year,” Goff told reporters. “It’s a whole new thing, and I understand it, but just like every other team in this league, there are expectations. I don’t know what the stat is, but every year there are new teams in the playoffs. Every year there are teams that were in the playoffs last year that aren’t. Why not us? Why can’t we be that one that wasn’t in last year that is this year? Again, it starts one week at a time, but internally, our expectations are as high as anyone else.”
With so many new faces surrounding the organization, chemistry within the team is of the utmost importance. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see many of the starters perform outside of the first game of the preseason, leaving many of the questions around the team still up in the air and left unanswered. For Goff, though, this is quite normal.
“That was the approach taken in LA, and it worked for us. Here we played in the first game, and I feel like it’s worked. We supplemented it well in practice and have gotten the work we need in, and we all trust Dan, and I think the plan is great, and we’re ready to go,” Goff said.
The coaching staff used the preseason as an evaluation tool instead of implementing reps for the first team. It could go in either direction, but it feels like the coaching staff has structured their practices well enough to overcome the potential drawbacks while building the trust and chemistry for the offense to grow.
“I think just continuing to get better every day. There are a million things, whether it’s run game, run action, play pass, drop back. You know everything that we’re trying to work on every single day, work in progress, and trying to improve, and I feel like we’ve come a long way. I mentioned this last week. I feel like we’re settling in really well and ready to go for San Francisco.”
With the receiver corps going through a complete overhaul, it was going to be interesting to see which players would perform and potentially be a trusted outlet for Goff. It has become clear T.J. Hockenson is Goff’s go-to man, but another player looks to have to build a good rapport with the Lions quarterback, Kalif Raymond.
“It’s always surprising guys like him who kind of bounced around the league for a few years and seems like he’s found a place to stick it. I’ve loved him. He’s been tremendous, works hard every day, does his job works hard, shows up is consistent, we can rely on him we can trust him, and that’s kind of the bottom line of a quarterback if you can trust a guy if you can know where he is going to be put him on the field and we feel pretty good about it. It’s really cool to see he’s been cut a few times, and now he’s kind of making a name for himself, and it’s exciting.”
With the season opener against the San Francisco 49ers right around the corner, Goff is excited to get into Ford Field and feed off the energy from the crowd after he got a taste of it in the preseason. He is holding himself and the team to higher expectations than most would give them credit for. With the outside noise pounding the potential ineptness of the Lions, Goff is choosing to ignore the negativity and potentially surprise the doubters.
“I don’t really know what surprises would look like, but we feel really good. I’ve talked about this at length. Internally our expectations are to win games and then, first of all, win the division that’s always the expectations, win the division and then go from there. Externally couldn’t care less and honestly don’t really know what it would be. So hopefully, if there is something to surprise, we will do that, but you know every day is a new day, and we’re just trying to win.”