When the Rams traded quarterback Jared Goff to the Lions in early February, along with two future first-round picks and a third-round pick, for quarterback Matthew Stafford, it said two things very clearly: First, Rams head coach and offensive shot-caller Sean McVay was tired of designing his playbook around Goff’s obvious limitations. Second, Stafford provides many more options in the passing game with his mobility and ability to make throws all over the field.
Why Matthew Stafford will be a franchise-defining bargain for his new NFL team
In a recent interview, McVay opened up about Goff, and what went wrong in the end.
“I think that’s a really tough thing to answer. What I think is important to make sure that I mention is the amount of good things and really great leadership that he provided since I got here as a head coach. There’s been a Super Bowl appearance, there’s been a conference championship win, there’s been two division titles, there’s been three playoff wins that he was an intricate part of, there’s been three playoff appearances. So, what I’d rather focus on are the things that I think he did a great job of to establish himself in this league. The way he handled himself consistently day in and day out and all I can do is just be appreciative of that. That’s kind of what I would say on Jared.”
Goff seemed to be the perfect on-field extension of McVay’s offensive philosophies in 2018, the year the Rams made it to Super Bowl LIII before being stymied by the Patriots. Bill Belichick had a defiantly effective game plan for Goff — he would show one coverage before McVay’s voice cut out in Goff’s helmet, and then switch to another when Goff had to process things himself. Add that to the fact that teams had stopped biting on McVay’s pre-snap motion concepts earlier that season, and Goff was left to make things happen more with his own talent than the full use of McVay’s architecture. And that was never going to be the optimal formula.
In 2017 and 2018, Goff’s first two seasons under McVay, Goff tied with Philip Rivers for the fourth-most touchdown passes in the NFL with 60. His interception rate of 1.83 was the eighth-lowest in the league — lower than Russell Wilson’s, Matthew Stafford’s, Dak Prescott’s, and Patrick Mahomes’. His quarterback rating of 100.8 was the sixth-highest.
But in 2019 and 2020, after the Rams had signed Goff to a four-year, $134 million contract extension, his regression was obvious. He threw just 42 touchdown passes, coughed up 29 interceptions, and his passer rating dropped to 88.1. It wasn’t quite the complete reversal of fortune fellow 2016 draft pick Carson Wentz experienced last season, but the last two seasons confirmed what Goff’s detractors believed him to be: A product of McVay’s system, incapable of operating outside the box at a level required of a true franchise quarterback.
Why the Rams won the Stafford-Goff trade in an absolute landslide
McVay refused to lay the blame at Goff’s feet, saying that the trade was simply the best decision for the organization.
“I think what I would say that I’ve learned over the last handful of years is things change by the day. And you probably want to be careful making blanket statements when you can’t predict the future. Again, all I can go back to is appreciation for the times that we did have and wishing him nothing but the best moving forward.
“I think Jared and I had a lot of conversations. We had one that I want to keep that between myself and Jared, but I don’t want to get into the specifics of those types of things. But when you look back on the four that we did have together, there’s a lot of times you can smile on. And I would say there’s a lot of things that, you know, when I self-reflect, I certainly wish I was better for him in some instances. And those are things that think you have to acknowledge, move forward and make sure that, that you learn from every mistake that you make. And certainly, I’m not going to run away from the things that I could have been better for him as a leader and as a coach. There was a lot of really good things that occurred from 2017, and on that I think we can eventually really have a much better appreciation for. We have had good conversations that were healthy. And I think we were able to both communicate open and honestly with one another, but those details were to keep between us.”
All that said, there’s absolutely no doubt that the Rams recognized that the ability to return to their former Super Bowl-level performance on offense was going to require a quarterback with the simple ability to do more. Still, McVay refused to take the bait when asked whether the offensive downturn was all his quarterback’s fault.
“I think the unfair narrative has been that some of our decrease in production is exclusively on the quarterback, that’s not true at all,” McVay concluded. “I think certainly, I have a big hand in that. I have to be able to look myself in the mirror and acknowledge and be able to evolve, improve and take ownership in that. I do know that the head coach and the quarterback are the ones that always, sometimes you get too much credit or too much blame, but I’m not going to run away from the blame that’s deserved on my end. What I do think is important is that the narrative becomes, all right, this is the outlet for why the offense wasn’t what it was, that’s unfair to Jared and I think it’s disrespectful to what he’s done over the last four years. There’s a lot of things.
“Football’s the ultimate team sport. That quarterback position is vital to your success, but it’s not exclusively the reason for, or the reason not. There’s an element that absolutely, it’s about the ten around him. It’s about what kind of things are we doing to put our players in the most favorable spots? And when you go back and you watch, and there’s a lot of layers to every single snap, every single play, it’s not exclusive to the quarterback and there’s a lot of times when I’m looking at saying, ‘Man, I’ve got to do a better job, or we do collectively as a staff,’ and then there’s somewhere we’re saying, ‘We’ve got to execute. Whether it’s from upfront, tight ends, receivers, running backs or the quarterback.’ That’s what makes football such a unique game, but I do think that’s what goes back to it being the ultimate team game because it takes all 11 to be able to operate at an efficient level. It takes coaches and players being connected and being on the same page.”
What does he want in a quarterback, and how important is that quarterback to the overall team success? McVay pointed more to the overall than to the quarterback’s responsibility.
“I would say this, I think as a team going back, you kind of just bring it back to being in that Green Bay visitor’s locker room after the game,” he said of the Rams’ divisional round loss to the Packers, in which Goff completed 21 of 27 passes for 174 yards and a touchdown. “What I think is so hard is that when you fall short or when you lose in the divisional round, or when we lost in the Super Bowl a couple years ago. What you don’t appreciate until you accumulate enough experience to really apply tangible evidence is how difficult it is – when you really say, ‘Hey, you start over.’ You don’t just show up where you fell short the following year. It’s so difficult to get yourself in a position to win your opener, to then follow that up by winning your second game, putting yourself in a position to win a division, potentially compete for a first-round bye, get into the playoffs, win in the playoffs.
“So, there’s so many things that we just want to take it one day at a time, be totally and completely present. I think it’s really all-encompassing to coaches, offense, defense, special teams – everybody can do their job at a little bit higher level. If we do that and we continue to just build and peak at the right times, you give yourself an opportunity to be relevant. Kind of like what I was saying earlier with the Bucs, they peaked at the right time. I think they showed that they can handle some adversity, I think a lot of people were probably counting them out after we had a game on Monday night, where we won, then they lose to the Chiefs the following week. But they had a late bye, they did a great job of rallying the troops and peaking at the right time. So, we’re really just focused on what we can control right now and that’ll be an ever-evolving process as we’re gearing towards whoever we open with and trying to really start 1-0.”
The Rams will try and start 1-0 in 2021 with Matthew Stafford, and would seem to have a far better opportunity of building on that than they did with Jared Goff.