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MalibuRam
As poorly as Goff has been playing the Rams are 5-2 against playoff teams this year.Goff has been in a slump, however he has proven he has the skills to outplay the best..
Red bit: agreed.
In terms of their games against playoff teams, they played 6 games against 5 playoff teams this year and went 4-2. Buffalo, Washington, Seattle twice, Chicago, and Tampa.
As for the blue bit, I have some disagreements. To me "As poorly as Goff has been playing" is a kind of too open-ended way to put it. I would put it this way. Goff was bad in 4 games, and anywhere from decent to solid to good in 11 others (not all 11 were wins though). That's the more accurate picture. For example they couldn't run the ball in either the Tampa or Arizona games and threw it 98 times (both games combined) to get the wins. And he played well overall in the 2nd half of both the Bills and Jets games.
In Saturday's wildcard game, he gutted out the injury and did enough to help the defense and running game win.
Back to the wins against playoff teams. I think you agree that in fact Goff was an instrumental part of winning against the 4 playoff teams, though in the interests of full disclosure, 2 of those were not teams with winning records. Against the 2 teams with winning records--Seattle and Tampa--he was (combined) 66 of 88 (75%) for 678 yards and w/ an avg. qb rating of 98.3, which is at the high end of solid (across 16 games would be ranked 12th). Also in those games the Rams converted 17 of 30 3rd downs, for a 57% conversion rate, which across 16 games would rank 1st in the league (and high above the current #1 team which converts 3rd downs at a 49.4% rate). In both games, the Rams running game was not at all dominant--they got 3.6 YPC in one game and 1.8 in the other.
So to me, the phrase "as poorly as Goff has been playing," without being qualified, does not quite capture it. I would not say he has been in a slump, I would say he has been up and down. The question is WHY was he up and down (or really, why was he down when he was down), and different people have different answers.
And yes in the past he has outplayed the best and showed he had the skills to do it.
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Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/10/2021 10:25PM by zn.