I have no idea whether Goff will turn out to be our football Messiah or football Mistake.
But either way, it is necessary that Goff is held up as the Franchise QB for the Rams. Period.
No "open competition".
Mannion and Murray need to be positioned as fighting for the back-up role to Goff. Period.
Goff needs all the backing, time, and patience to develop. I've not heard even the harshest critic say that he doesn't have the physical tools.
This is the 2017, new-CBA NFL. This is the NFL that has little choice but to take unprepared QBs from the college ranks who display traits that on paper translate to the NFL game, and then teach them the NFL game. There are precious few colleges that run a Pro-style offense and the trend has been to dumb down the offenses in colleges and give the QBs less responsibility. One read and throw.
And the new-CBA NFL makes it daunting on rookie QBs to learn the offense. Certainly if a rookie has great mobility, he can thrive at first. But....whether he develops beyond that is questionable. In fact, the evidence is that he won't if he has to rely on his legs to make plays.
I have a feeling, just listening to McVay, that he completely gets that. So he is going to develop Goff from the ground up and that is going to take discipline on the part of the coaching staff, and patience on the parts of McVay, Goff and to a degree fans.
That means that opening day Goff 2017 ought to be incrementally better than last game 2016 Goff. And last game 2017 Goff ought to be incrementally better than opening day Goff 2017. If he is not, it is either because Goff doesn't have it; or because the staff hasn't designed and implemented the proper development path (setting aside such unknowns as injury to Goff and/or as bad, or worse, complementary parts).
I, for one, would be quite satisfied with a .500 season. Not predicting it. 9-7 would be my upper end expectation. And I would be happy with a 21-22 point per game offensive output. That would be a significant, but doable, accomplishment if Goff is progressing.
The Rams will know if they have their guy or not after 2017 is in the books. No way does he have to be a finished product by the end of 2017. But....either we've seen a strong progression, or we've seen little progression and thus the Rams need to look elsewhere.
