For Jared Goff, it’s more than coaching...

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For Jared Goff, It’s More Than Coaching

By ALBERT BREER


I thought I’d fill this space today—after seeing some of the throws he made the last couple weeks—with the story of how Jared Goff was throwing a right cross at the perception of his ’17 season. Of how he went from product of Sean McVay’s system to a guy worth building a system, and a franchise, around.

After talking to Goff on Wednesday night, I think I had it wrong all along.

So instead of this being about some huge leap Goff was making year over year, it became how the rest of us might just be catching up to how good he really is, and really was last year while McVay was winning Coach of the Year and Todd Gurley was winning Offensive Player of the Year. Instead of Goff affirming that so much has changed for him in Year 3, he argued that his progress, in fact, remains incremental.

“I don’t think three games into the season I’m exponentially better than I was last year,” Goff said, as he wrapped up prep on the short week for tonight’s game against the Vikings. “I mean, I think I did a lot of good things last year. We were able to make the playoffs. Going into the offseason, learning more about defenses, getting more comfortable in our own offense and continuing to grow and get better.

“I expected myself to get better. I always strive for the extra one percent. Right now I don’t feel like I’m exponentially better.”

Maybe it just seems that way. He’s right, too. His numbers were damn good last year—Goff completed 62.1 percent of his passes for 3,804 yards, 28 touchdowns, seven picks and a 100.5 rating in 15 games. Through three games this year he’s connected on 70.3 percent of his throws, and has a 111.0 rating, with his yardage projecting to 4,705, and TD-INT differential to 30-10 over that 15-game sample size.

But whatever it is everyone is seeing out of Goff sure looks good. Which means … maybe we were all just a little late to the party?

“I think any time people make a predisposed decision about who you are or what you’ve done, they’ve made up their mind, they’ll have certain reasons for why stuff change, and it can’t possibly be ‘because I was wrong’,” Goff said. “That’s what happened a little last year. And I don’t really care what people think, but hopefully as time goes on, it’s not the same stuff.”

But we’re starting with a great Thursday night game, and a showdown involving two quarterbacks whose career breakthroughs were sparked by the 32-year-old Rams coach. For Vikings QB Kirk Cousins, it happened in Washington in 2015, with the Redskins making the playoffs for just the second time this decade. Cousins had McVay as his OC for another year, then this past offseason earned a huge payday in Minnesota.

For both quarterbacks, it took time to convince people they were more than the product of rock-solid coaching. Now Cousins has made it happen under different coaches, and with a different team. With Goff, the difference is in how the proof has come—through a slew of wow throws that have victimized defenses over the last few weeks. In an effort to explain that as best we could, I asked a couple Rams staffers for a list of those plays.

I came away with five from the last two weeks, and asked Goff to explain them to me, which he was gracious enough to do.

Play 1 — Arizona

The situation: Third quarter, 5:20 left; 1st-and-10, Cardinals 42.

The throw: Goff stands in the face of blitzing safety Antoine Bethea (who was flagged for roughing) and sends a rope to the left sideline, where Robert Woods, running a streak, plucks the ball from above Arizona’s Budda Baker, in tight coverage.

The quarterback’s take: “I got hit on it pretty good. That’s a play we’ve ran before, we ran it a bunch last year. A play we’re comfortable with. Robert ran a good route and they actually covered it pretty well. We were a little loose up front, they had a safety blitz coming and were able to run through on us, and I just got it off before he got there. And I just gave Robert a chance.

He’s shown it, he’s become such a great ball-catcher, he’s shown so much improvement from last year, he’s probably the most sure-handed guy we’ve got right now. And it’s just really nice when you can throw it, and I got hit, I didn’t see the end of the play, and heard the crowd go, and usually that means interception or a good catch, and that one ends up being a good catch.”

Play 2 — Arizona

The situation: Fourth quarter, 10:22 left; 3rd-and-4, Rams 48

The throw: Goff takes a shotgun snap, and Arizona sends six. With Chandler Jones looping in and bearing down on Goff, the quarterback stood tall and delivered a crosser to Brandin Cooks—sneaking it high into a tiny window just over Baker’s head, and underneath Bethea, playing the deeper part of the field.

The quarterback’s take: “It’s actually a similar throw to the Woods one, where he’s covered, but having the comfort level I have with Brandin and the trust I have in him, was able to throw that ball high and give him a chance knowing that the DB was not looking and Brandin was looking. If that ever happens, you give them a chance and you could have a good outcome.

I think that type of throw just comes with being more comfortable and having a lot of trust in the receiver. Would I have made it last year? I don’t know. I’d like to think so, but I don’t know if I can speak to that. I think just being comfortable and having a good rapport with our receivers is why that one worked.”

Play 3 — Chargers

The situation: Second quarter, 10:50 left; 2nd-and-6, Chargers 35

The throw: Goff takes the snap from center, gets protection, and puts the ball up for tight end Tyler Higbee, who posterizes Chargers rookie linebacker Kyzir White.

The quarterback’s take: “They’re all kind of similar throws. That one is very similar to Brandin’s and even Robert’s, where he was covered and I was just confident in my receivers and confident in myself. The throw is not as hard as the catch. The throw, I’m just throwing it high. The key to that, and really the first three we’ve talked about, it’s trusting my receiver that they’re going to make a play on a high-difficulty catch, and just giving them a chance ultimately with the throw.”

Play 4 – Chargers

The situation: Third quarter, 12:51 left; 3rd-and-8, Chargers 47

The throw: Goff takes the shotgun snap and steps up in the pocket, going through his reads, and has to dodge defensive end Isaac Rochell to break the pocket and turn the play into a scramble drill, at which point Cooper Kupp breaks off his route. Goff hits Kupp streaking upfield in stride, and Kupp gallivants into the end zone with a 47-yard scoring play.

The quarterback’s take: “It was just an off-schedule play. Cooper was an underneath read, and I didn’t see anyone open through the first three reads, and tried to move around the pocket a little bit, and got my eyes up off the rush, and Cooper spun around the defender up the field, and I knew he had a lot of room in front of him, so I tried to put the ball out in front of him, and was able to put a good ball on him and he made a great play breaking that tackle and scoring. I made a similar play in the third game of season last year against San Francisco down the right sideline.”

So at this point, Goff’s contention is every one of these throws, he’d have been capable of making last year. And then we came to the last one I had on my list, and that one, as it turned out, was different.

Play 5 — Chargers

The situation: Second quarter, 1:40 left; 1st-and-10, Rams 32

The throw: In hurry-up, Goff takes the shotgun snap, gets protection and finds Woods on a deep out-breaking route. The ball clears Pro Bowl corner Casey Heyward’s outstretched arm by no more than a foot or two, and hits the receiver less than a second before rookie Derwin James makes it over to help on the coverage.

The quarterback’s take: “It was Cover 2. That would be a throw—that’s the best example of one that would’ve been tougher last year, just in me understanding defenses and understanding what their intent is, and understanding, what’s Casey’s responsibility and what’s Derwin’s responsibility, and being able to manipulate that in the way that we did. And feeling confident in where to throw the ball and knowing Robert would be there. All of it comes back to being confident in the receiver and really trusting him.”

The point here? Goff’s come a long way in two years, for sure. But it didn’t happen all at once. And if you think it’s all coaching, Goff isn’t going to let that get to him, or even try to change your mind, and he insists it doesn’t bother him in the slightest.

“Never. Never,” Goff said. “[McVay’s] incredible and he deserves all the praise he gets. My rookie year was not so good, and coming into my second year, one of two things was going to happen—I was gonna be bad or I was gonna be good. And if I was good, they were gonna pin it on someone else. It’s all positive, it’s the way it works. I expected this coming into everything. All I can do is get better.

“Sean’s incredible, he’s probably the best coach in the league right now, won Coach of the Year last year, we’re doing stuff offensively—I mean, his innovation is incredible. I’m very thankful that he’s the guy I get to ask questions of, I get to learn from and have as the one teaching me.”

And that’s an ongoing thing in L.A., which you’ll be able to see tonight. Back in camp, Goff explained to me how, as he saw it, the Rams had to work to stay one step ahead as teams caught up to what they were doing, and the quarterback says McVay has done that through continued wrinkles in motioning and formationing to give defenses different looks.

It’s also helped, as Goff alluded to, being in Year 2 with Kupp and Woods, and having a quick study in Cooks. And the promise of guys like Higbee doesn’t hurt either.

Add it up, and you see why the guys calling the shots in L.A. feel so good about where Goff is at 23—the same age draft classmate Carson Wentz was as a rookie. Safe to say, too that Goff is pretty excited looking at the future around him, though he wouldn’t bite when I asked about he and McVay having a Sean Payton/Drew Brees-style 10- to 15-year run.

“That’s always the pipe dream for down the road,” Goff said. “We’re two years into this. We’ve been successful to this point, but there are so many good teams, so many good players that you have to keep on it at all times and can’t really look that far down the road. In 10 years, if we’re still together, we can talk about it. I promise you I’ll talk to you about it.”

For now, at least, Goff has proven he’s worth talking about as one of the best young quarterbacks in the game. And that, McVay himself would tell you, is regardless of who’s coaching him.