Quote
zn
Besides the fact that AD had no arm and Goff has more than enough arm.
And btw I am not responding directly to your post, just indirectly. I am more responding to the whole discussion. Just putting in 2 cents.
Anyway.
AD started out okay though incidentally I never believed in him. But then he melted down. Same as Foles. By melted down I mean something very specific. Not just that he played badly or struggled. His body language and actions and entire approach in his play indicated shaken confidence and this sense that he couldn't bail himself out of what he had gotten into. In the middle of that they press, and make more mistakes. He had hit his ceiling, head first, with a bang. And it wasn't one game, it was a string of consecutive games.
Goff was almost immediately in circumstances to melt down. The set up for a meltdown was there in 2016. And he did struggle---he was an especially green rookie in challenging circumstances and no running game. That was all a set up to meltdown, and he never did. He did not always play well but he did not have anything like the kind of meltdown Davis and Foles had. He was never shaken, he never lost his poise, he never panicked...the other 2 did.
To me that means a lot. It means he has the inner constitution to go through struggles and not snap. He kept fighting.
Now in terms of gameplanning for him to look good. Okay. Will defenses catch up with that? Probably. But then the same coach will see that and respond, right? No matter what a defense does to you, you can find an answer. So I am not worried about that. That will just be part of the back and forth that an improving team goes through.
I do know from what I have seen that any struggles Goff faces, he has the kind of hard wiring that can handle that.
Besides it already happened his freshman year at Cal and he emerged from that. I just think that's who he is.
....
Why couldn;t they adjust as well for Davis when he started to melt down? That is yes defenses were catching up to him, why not just adjust accordingly? It;s not just that Davis was not mentally/emotionally as tough as Goff, it;'s also that he was the more limited player. Take away the things Davis liked to do, add that to the things he couldn't do, and he had a pretty narrow tunnel to go through. There were just certain throws Davis was never going to make.
Not only is Goff emotionally/mentally tougher than Davis (IMO) but he has far fewer limitations on his game. He had a much wider range of throws he can make. So I am confident that when defenses close in on Goff, #1, he's not going to be as brittle as Davis was (amd Foles was) when that happens. And #2, McVay has a much wider range of options with Goff and can therefore program in a wider range of adjustments.
