It’s not often a team trades its franchise quarterback two years after signing him to a four-year, $134 million deal, committing to him for seemingly the foreseeable future. Jared Goff looked like he’d be Sean McVay’s quarterback for years to come after the Rams inked him to an extension in September of 2019, but Goff regressed considerably in the two seasons that followed.
That, of course, led to the Rams’ trade with the Lions, sending Goff and three draft picks to Detroit for Matthew Stafford. As poorly as Goff was playing at the end of his tenure in L.A., this was a trade that almost no one saw coming.
Not even Goff expected it, and that’s where McVay has some regrets.
Goff admitted that he was “a little blindsided” by the deal, saying it “came somewhat from left field.” With Goff returning to SoFi Stadium on Sunday, there will be plenty of questions for McVay, Rams players and Goff himself this week. The questions started for McVay on Monday and he acknowledged that he could’ve handled the trade better, regretting the lack of communication he had with Goff.
“Yeah. If you said, ‘Do you think that the way that it unfolded was totally different than the way anybody anticipated?’ Yes. Could I have handled it better in terms of, ‘Hey if there’s a possibility of it let’s get ahead, even if you’re out of town, yada, yada, yada?’ So to answer your question, yes. I wish that there was better clear communication,” McVay told reporters. “You don’t want to catch guys off guard. It came together a lot faster than anybody anticipated. But yeah, of course. Anytime that tough decisions and things like that, where people are affected, you always want to be as understanding and as empathetic as possible and think about it through the other person’s lens. And there are certainly things I would do it a little bit differently when those situations arise in the future. But I think Jared knows the respect that I have for him. I feel very good about the dialogue that we were able to have before he had gone to Detroit. He knows the appreciation that we as an organization, that I have as a coach for all the good things that he did here. But to say that it was perfectly handled on my end, I wouldn’t be totally accurate in that, but I’ll never claim to be perfect. But I will try to learn from some things that I can do better and I think that was one of them without a doubt.”
Goff and Stafford have been trending in opposite directions this season with their new teams. Stafford looks like an MVP candidate with the Rams, throwing 16 touchdown passes in six games and leading Los Angeles to a 5-1 start. Goff, on the other hand, has yet to win a game with the Lions and was just called out by his coach, Dan Campbell.
“I feel like he needs to step up more than he has,” Campbell said after Sunday’s 34-11 loss to the Bengals.
The Rams are very clearly a better team with Stafford under center, looking like Super Bowl contenders in the NFC. The future for Goff is uncertain in Detroit, a stunning turn of events just two years after signing a massive extension with the Rams.
McVay says there was no single point in time that led to the Rams’ decision to move on from Goff, saying it was more about the opportunity to land a quarterback like Stafford.
“Going back to when this all went down, it was more about the opportunity to acquire Matthew and what we felt like that meant for our football team,” he said. “And that was why that decision was made. And that’s why things came together as quickly as they did, because we felt like it was a rare opportunity to acquire a player of Matthew’s caliber, that those opportunities just don’t come up often. The studying and evaluation of his game and then kind of that organic interaction that was able to occur in Cabo. It was kind of a very unique situation, to say the least. And that’s what led to the decision being made in the manner and the timing that it was.”
We’ll see what the reception for Goff is like at SoFi Stadium on Sunday, but fans should be appreciative of the job he did in his five years at quarterback – most notably helping lead the Rams to Super Bowl LIII.
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