Building Jared Goff--Breer

From Albert Breer:
[mmqb.si.com]

Building Jared Goff

Notice I didn’t say “rebuilding,” because that’s not what the Sean McVay-led Rams believe that their rising sophomore quarterback needs. No, Goff just needs to be built, period, as an NFL quarterback. He came into the league last year as a raw prospect, and that’s still where he is.

The positives? The initial look that the staff has taken at his tape has shown that Goff stood in there behind a deficient offensive line, and displayed some toughness, which was apparent during a similarly rough year he endured as a freshman at Cal in 2013. Also, he has a clean, natural stroke as a passer, something that’s challenging to create if a quarterback doesn’t have it coming into the NFL. And he’s accurate and can make the throws now required in the offense that McVay and offensive coordinator Matt LaFleur are installing. That said, he has a long way to go to become the kind of quarterback that Kirk Cousins was for McVay or Matt Ryan was for LaFleur last year.

The process for Goff will start in the next few weeks when he begins work with renowned quarterback coaches Adam Dedeaux and Tom House. It will start with what, from a technical standpoint, is called “sequencing.” The idea is to align Goff’s shoulder turn and his torque so it’s one clean motion, and tie his feet together with his hips and his shoulders. And the overriding theme here is to create consistency and balance in how Goff throws the ball, which should help him both in a clean pocket and when things break down around him. Another improvement that the Rams and the QB coaches are looking for is better core strength. That’s one area where Ryan made huge leaps with Dedeaux and House last offseason, and LaFleur saw the benefits of it in the quarterback making throws he couldn’t previously.

The other side of Goff being raw is within the mental part of the game—he came from a pure spread in Berkeley—and the Rams will have to wait until April to see how well he can take the new offense from the classroom to the grass. But as the new coaches see it, there’s plenty to like, and the feeling is Goff will have a better environment to learn, after last year playing in an offense devoid of an identity and without bedrocks for the then-rookie quarterback to fall back on.