Quote
Deadpool
And thats ok.

And I do agree with you that there are multiple reasons for his poor performances. Its also not lip service when I say there are other factors. (yeah, I read that, and yeah, I know who you were talking about, there are only about 3 posters with this stance)

1. Interior pass rush, wanna fluster a pure pocket passer like Goff, pressure him up the middle. That was the way to rattle Brady as well. The Rams have to fix the center position. I've been begging for a OC for, what?, 3 years now? Its almost criminal.

2. Lacking Gurley. He was an all world back catching and running and he was the defenses first priority. Its no wonder Goff "has regressed" since 2018. Gurley was a shell last year and gone this year. I think Akers can be very good, but Gurley was elite.

3. A deep threat that gets separation. Any of the Rams can get deep, but can they get deep with a step? Probably not. There is more to NFL football than pure, unadulterated speed, but it doesn't hurt at times.

4. The new offense. The Rams have done less 11 personnel and more 12 and even 13 stuff. Goff has always thrived in a more wide open up tempo offense.

So yeah. Its not all Goff. Or maybe it is and thats all lip service. But that leads me to my main point:

I've been saying for literal weeks now that I think he is processing things too slowly, making poor reads and taking too long at the LoS. Well apparently McVay also thinks Goff isn't seeing what he should be seeing out there. I'm not going to attempt to read into that, or make stuff up to "fit my narrative" or misconstrue what McVay was saying.

I have a theory that I have zero proof of. I think after McVay came out and criticized Goff and said those turnovers cannot happen, Goff got way too conservative with the ball, stopped throwing at what he thought were too tight of windows and just started to get gunshy. When that happens, you are done out there, things are happening way too fast. You cannot be indecisive. Goff looks cooked. At least this season. He needs to clean out the cobwebs.

Here's what I said and that appears to be a response to it: My view is basically that I don't think the one single common thread in the bad games is Goff playing poorly. I think there are other common threads in all those games.

I count Goff as having 4 bad games. Miami, SF twice, and the 2nd Seattle game. I don't count the Jets game because Goff got going in the 2nd half. There were defensive let downs so bad in that game (including blown coverages) that Orlovsky made a vid about it.

What happened in the 4 games?

Point 1. Agree mostly, with somewhat different emphasis. You put it on Blythe but I put it on the entire OL--they got directly attacked and beat up. In spite of the Miami game, actually, the Rams have been good overall against the blitz. But even though I put it on the OL not just Blythe, there were games where they came to play and won the LOS. They lost in the 2nd Seattle game but then came back in the wildcard game and dominated, Whitworth being a big part of that. In terms of replacing Blythe, they are kind of forced to do that anyway. Blythe is on a one year and they can't afford him. They might have a guy in house like Anchrum who can become a center, and they can certainly draft one.

Point 2. And agree mostly, but with some different emphasis. Gurley and then losing him was a big factor but then there were games where they could not run and yet came through. In the 1st Arizona and Tampa games for example they threw it 98 times combined. They could run against Seattle in the 3rd game, a lot of that having to do with both a more mature, healthier Akers and getting Whitworth back. The run game is always a factor with Goff but it is not universal or absolute--they have a good run game with Akers and they weren't always stymied when defenses took away the run.

Point 3. I just agree about the WRs and separation, no qualifier. Well except to say that while this is a factor and having that would be nice, it's not must-have, IMO.

Point 4. Your reasoning for #4 I turn around and do it this way--McVay adapts to his chalkboard, he doesn't adapt to his qb. Someone recently mentioned that the minute he got Mahomes Reid put in some spread plays from the college Air Raid. I can't imagine McVay ever doing that. He seems to get tone deaf about game situations and about in-game tactical stuff and about things like building around the strengths of his players (this is real but I don't want to overstate it). An example of this came last year with Higbee. The TE they were originally trying to get more targets was Everett. not Higbee. Everett then got hurt and so they handed that mantle to Higbee, and he dominated--he was a revelation. When asked if he was surprised by that, Gurley said no--none of that was a surprise, everyone already knew about Higbee just from practice. Gurley's snarky implication was that it just took McVay a long time to use him. It's also the case that Goff has always been a learn it by doing it kind of guy and McVay gave him a new offense without a real installation. In fact here's a guy who is supposed to be this qb guru and right now there's talk that he undermined Goff's confidence. That's on the coach. A great coach when it comes to handling players in situations like this can convey the criticism without undermining the player. Every player is different and you reach them different ways. If you don't know how to do that you're just a control freak who loses patience when people don't fit into your square holes. Is there some of that in McVay? Yeah I think, a bit...but again I don't want to overstate it.

Finally. The picture of Goff as having weeks of these dominant issues just simply does not strike me as true. Just looking at the regular season, he was bad against SF in game 2 and Seattle in game 2, but since the bye that's 3 games where played well and 2 games where he came back from a slow start or played decently enough to win (Jets and Patz). 5-2 and yet many people seem to be focused on the bad games. What I see instead is more than enough to work with to develop solid consistency and not this decent to good 71% of the time thing.

I don't worry about the turnovers with Goff, that's an easy fix. The real problem was them piling up in 2 games (Miami and SF) and they always had the same cause--when things were collapsing around him he tended to press and try to make plays instead of taking a sack, bailing on the play, going out of bounds, sliding, etc. He had to unlearn his tendency to press and take it all on him (something which he probably got from Cal where sometimes he actually was all they had). Reduce that stuff and you reduce the perception that he is always bad or that he regressed. And this gets us back to coaching. 3 years now and McVay goes up against defenses that take over games and he does not find ways to settle things down and turn the momentum around--in those moments is a long list of klutzy in-game futility.

This Goff can be developed back into the better Goff from 2018. A more consistent OL would help, a more consistent run game would help, and the coach clearing up some of his own blindspots would help too. But above all Goff has to continue acting like he learned his one big lesson--don't PRESS when things around you are not holding up. That's his biggest flaw IMO.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/12/2021 08:46PM by zn.