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merlin
Main thing for me with Goff is the question of whether his struggles were reasonable, given the play of the line.
On almost any given play the OL would spring a leak and put a rusher in his face just like it would put a tackler in Gurley's face on so many runs. When that happens over and over the human being starts to anticipate that and it will affect their play. Gurley seemed to mope and withdraw himself over it, and also was not nearly as aggressive at breaking runs upfield electing instead to string plays out and get to the sideline if he didn't think it was there. But Goff to my eye at least was different. He certainly pressed, yes. He pressed all season long and we saw more INTs, fumbles, and missed open targets as a result.
But in this character study, if you want to call it that, what I took away is that Goff still managed to keep his eyes downfield waiting on his wideouts. He didn't fundamentally change his attacking mindset which is really important. We were still in just about every game in large part IMO because our QB battled the way he did. There were so many plays where I wish he would have checked down because in this offense an on-time checkdown will often have a chance to bust a big play, but the fact that he didn't is a mix of good and bad. It's good that he's got the cajones to try to stay on course with what McVay wants to do which is stretch the field deep as well as laterally. But it's bad that he'd miss the open options for easy conversions, and all the other stuff like the fumbles and INTs.
Back to the first thing for me, though, is that his struggles were reasonable. Young QB + poor protections + poor run game generally = disaster. But 2019 was not a disaster. So moving forward it could be that 2019 will serve as a huge learning season for him and that he'll be a better QB for it.
I've said similar things myself and you put it very well. Some posters in the past have said, well Goff was still making bad throws on plays where there was no pressure. My response was, that would be a concern IF he was doing that behind a relatively healthy, stable OL. The problem with a shaky or injury depleted OL is that the qb cannot have confidence in the protection. That directly affects his play--timing, rhythm, anticipation, mechanics, the whole 9 yards. Yes the qb starts pressing.
Very few qbs have ever performed consistently well behind an injury broken OL. I've named Wilson and Brady and also stressed it caught up even with them the times it happened to them. If you put an out of sync, replacement-heavy OL out there it takes the qb down with it.
I've also heard people say, well all teams have injuries. No not like this. All teams have injuries scattered throughout the different starting units. That's just football. Not all teams have a single unit that has
multiple injuries to the point where it compromise that unit's effectiveness.
I've also heard people say, well then Goff needs things to be perfect. Well, no--he just needs a decently solid, relatively healthy OL.
(Though to be fair, OL injuries weren't the issue at first. There were some injury replacements in the first 9 games but the real problem in those games was 2 newbies playing on an OL where both OTs were playing subpar. You can't expect a line to cohere when it's that way.)
So anyway again you put it very well. I appreciate the post.
AND I completely agree that he could be a better qb for having gone through all that. He now has time to review film and maybe correct issues (like not checking down) but he also must KNOW he was the only reason that offense was ever in games, and that's even with him playing at a disadvantage with a shaky OL. There's situational lessons to learn from that plus an overall confidence boost.
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Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/23/2020 02:02PM by zn.
