Why Jared Goff ‘Doesn’t Fail’ and Keeps Getting Better

Albert Breer’s Inside the QB Room Series: Joe Burrow| Jordan Love

Jared Goff knows you haven’t changed your mind.

He knows it was made up as his half-decade run as the Rams’ quarterback circled the drain. Back then, in late 2020 and early 2021, Sean McVay was frustrated as his team kept hitting a glass ceiling. There was friction. Then, Goff was dealt. Or dumped, as most people saw it, into Los Angeles’s blockbuster trade to get Matthew Stafford, with Detroit taking on Goff’s monster contract as part of the deal that landed the Lions two first-round picks and a third.

Only Dan Campbell and Brad Holmes never saw it that way, and the proof is on the depth chart. Five and a half years later, Goff’s still their starting quarterback, and now has been a Lion, believe it or not, for longer than he was a Ram.

And yet, a lot of people still can’t wrap their heads around what Goff has become.

Again.

“You’re not wrong,” said Campbell, when confronted with the idea that Goff doesn’t get near the credit he deserves. “Yeah, totally,” he added. “But as we know, it doesn’t matter. I mean, we can’t change that. Like, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is we keep winning, and you win the big one, man. You win your division, and then you find a way to win the big one. And then, so be it. And if you still don’t get respect, who gives a crap, because you won, and nobody can take that away from you.

“So, yeah, absolutely. I mean, he is massively underrated. This is a quarterback that plays the quarterback position—he knows how to play quarterback. When you gotta have it, [he] can stand in the pocket, make an accurate throw, an accurate read, and that’s what the quarterback position is. And he’s a rare breed of man.”

To be clear, Campbell’s take does matter to Goff.

As for what other folks think? Goff doesn’t really care. But most around him are like Campbell—a little miffed that others can’t see what they do.

From a team standpoint, it’s pretty cut and dried. Goff’s taken two franchises to the conference championship game, and neither team was in a good place before he arrived. Goff was drafted by the Rams in 2016, joining a team that hadn’t made the playoffs in over a decade and one that was in the midst of a relocation. He was traded to the Lions in 2021, when Detroit had gone 30 years since its last playoff win, 38–6, over the Cowboys in the divisional round on Jan. 5, 1992.

Goff had rough first seasons in both places. By his third year as a Ram, he was playing in the Super Bowl. In his third year as a Lion, he was back in the NFC title game.

Goff’s sustained excellence

That path is different to be sure. There are similarities to Baker Mayfield—another former No. 1 pick traded after he led the Browns to their first playoff win in a generation—and maybe less with Sam Darnold, Daniel Jones and Geno Smith, who had less success in their first stops. What the other reclamations lack is the level of team success Goff has carried over from his first home to his second, or twin rebuilds he was a part of.

Goff does feel a kinship with them, saying, “It’s not too dissimilar from those guys. There’s mutual respect between myself and them.” He does, however, acknowledge the difference.

“What do I make of it?” he says, smiling. “I’m just trying to continue to get better. I really, really, really, honestly ignore all of it and think about who matters and whose opinions I really care about, which is my coaches and my teammates, and how can I improve that daily? How can I improve their vision of me daily? And that’s really all I care about. I really, truly don’t care [about] the outside stuff.

“Of course, you hear it sometimes, and it’ll be like a baby ignition sometimes, but if you don’t have the internal fuel, that fire will burn out.”

“So, yes, it’s driven me for sure. … When I got traded, subconsciously, obviously, you never want that to happen again. So every day in practice was like, 'I need to prove myself.’ And not that I wasn’t working hard in L.A. and trying my best. I certainly was. But I think realizing how quickly things can change, I mean, it was …”Jared Goff

As for Goff’s stated goal—to get better—that’s happened, too.

He was fifth and eighth in passer rating in his first and second years with McVay, respectively. He’s been in the top 10 in passer rating the past four years under Campbell, coming in second in his final year under Ben Johnson and third last year under the since-fired offensive coordinator Johnny Morton. His career rating of 96.8 is better than Josh Allen’s and Justin Herbert’s and, yes, Stafford’s, too.

That, of course, doesn’t necessarily mean he’s better than those guys. But it does speak to the level of play he’s sustained and how he produced in different environments and systems.

And, yes, the benefits he’s taken from getting knocked down and having to dust himself off.

“I’ve always known I’m tough mentally, but I think it’s certainly made me tougher,” Goff said. “It’s made me more perseverant. It’s when you see the bottom—and again, it’s relative to playing football—but when you see what rock bottom looks like, being traded, going 3–13, starting the next year at 1–6, that stretch of two years is about as hard as it’s going to get, other than not winning a game. When you see what that looks like, you become so much more thankful, knowing you never want to go back there.

“So, yes, it’s driven me for sure. … When I got traded, subconsciously, obviously, you never want that to happen again. So every day in practice was like, I need to prove myself. And not that I wasn’t working hard in L.A. and trying my best. I certainly was. But I think realizing how quickly things can change, I mean, it was …”

It was a quarterback fighting for his spot, knowing how quickly everything could change.

“Yeah, every day,” Goff responded. “And even though I’m a starter and I have been for five years here, I don’t think that’ll ever leave me. And I think that’s a really good thing.”

Goff excels despite changes

This year, more has changed for Goff than at any point since he became a Lion. A new coordinator, Drew Petzing, came in from outside the Campbell coaching orbit. All-Pro Penei Sewell is moving from right to left tackle, and rookie Blake Miller is starting opposite him. A new center, Cade Mays, was imported to take Frank Ragnow’s old spot, though he’s hurt now. And so, again, Goff has to be the bellwether amid the turnover.

The head coach sees him as ideal because he thought Goff would be good to lead another rebuild in the first place. As Saints assistant head coach, Campbell faced Goff in the Superdome in the 2018 NFC title game, saw a steady hand regardless of what was around him, and projected (correctly) that he was built for any storms ahead.

As a leader. As a player. As a person.

“Because, first of all, he gives a crap,” Campbell says. “And he is very hard on himself. He demands a lot of himself. And he’s unbelievably coachable. Like, you coach him hard, man, and he wants you to, because he wants to get better. But he also knows if we get after him, everybody on that team sees it. And so nobody’s got an excuse. If we’re getting on Jared Goff, then we can get on the rookie free agent, and, listen, man, nobody’s off limits.

“It means that much to him. … And then, man, look at the guy. First of all, he can see, he’s big, he’s tall, he’s tough, he’s smart. His processing speed reminds me of [Drew] Brees. He sees it, he sees it. And every year it’s gotten faster and faster. And then watch him under duress. Nobody makes a more accurate throw under duress than Jared Goff.”

The plan for 2026, for Petzing, is to leverage all that by melding Goff’s past, in different systems, with his present—that being all that he’s gotten from a decade playing.

On the first count, Petzing is reemphasizing elements of Johnson’s offense (particularly in the keeper game), under which Goff had his best individual days as a quarterback, and also taking things that the QB would be familiar with from playing for McVay in Los Angeles. On the second, the new OC is giving Goff a good level of autonomy at the line of scrimmage to play the cat-and-mouse game with the defense right to the snap.

Which, of course, is a far cry from the criticism he once got for having McVay in his ear until the 15-second cutoff on headset communication. That, in turn, has become another area where people haven’t updated their opinions on who Goff is, where he’s not the same as he was, even just a few years ago.

“All the presnap stuff, where I can get us in and out of the best play and help the O-line if I can see some things, pick up the blitz, change the play, the freedom I’ve been given here [in Detroit] is much more than I was given previously,” Goff said. “So you’re able to learn through some mistakes. Over the last five years, being able to change the play or get in and out of things has been fun.”

And that level of ownership of the scheme is one area where he sees himself playing faster and better than he ever has before.

“The guys who have played 10-plus years, you’ve seen a lot of coverages, you’ve seen a lot of things, and you’re able to eliminate options pretty quickly, so if there’s four guys out in a pattern, I know two of them aren’t going to be open, I can really work two of them based on what I know about the coverage and using your cues presnap,” Goff says. “And you’re able to lower your options, which increases your odds, right?

“So, that. And I think my feet, being able to, again, move through progressions quickly with my feet is about as good as I’ve ever been. Accuracy, I’ve always been pretty accurate, but that’s improving, too.”

That all plays into how he’s gotten here, where few figured he’d get, headed into his sixth year as the Lions’ quarterback.

Goff’s ‘healthy perspective’

Goff can say he doesn’t care what people say. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t hear it.

He does. Because the people he’s close to have told him. And while he can easily brush off what the public thinks of him, the part he doesn’t like is when it gets to his family and best friends, who pass along to him what bothers them about the commentary.

“Of course, and if I was in their shoes, I’d do the same thing,” he said. “I think it’s really hard for them not to want to make you feel better when things are bad, and people are saying things. And one overarching thing for me is trying to have a really good perspective. So you have all these voices and opinions for 10 years, but people have longer careers than me, and for some, it’s 10 years longer. And having a perspective of, like, I’m playing football, my family’s healthy, my wife’s healthy, I’m healthy, I’m fortunate to be rewarded for my play.

“Having a healthy perspective of that can kind of wash it away.”

As part of that, going into his second NFL decade at 31 years old, he’s thought some about how much longer he wants to go, and the answer, for now, is, “As long as I’m able to help a team win a championship. I don’t think that’s one year. I think that’s a long time, but if I feel like I can lead a team to winning a Super Bowl, that’s how long I want to play.”

“The guts, the moxie, when you’ve got all those intangibles with the skill set he’s got, tell me how he fails. I know the answer—he doesn’t fail.”Dan Campbell

And with Petzing, Sewell, Amon-Ra St. Brown, Jameson Williams, Sam LaPorta, Jahmyr Gibbs, Aidan Hutchinson, Jack Campbell, Alim McNeill, Kerby Joseph and Brian Branch alongside him—the young homegrown core he helped raise—Goff sees the opportunity to do that now, and for the foreseeable future.

Like he was in L.A., he’s in the center of it, as the tone-setter and triggerman.

Best of all, those who matter to him most can see it clearly.

“The guts, the moxie, when you’ve got all those intangibles with the skill set he’s got, tell me how he fails,” Campbell says. “I know the answer—he doesn’t fail.”

So, for Goff, this isn’t about changing anyone’s mind. It never has been. With the people who really count to him, that was never necessary.

Add us as a preferred source on GoogleFollowPublished 15 minutes ago | Modified 15 minutes agoALBERT BREER

Albert Breer is a senior writer covering the NFL for Sports Illustrated, delivering the biggest stories and breaking news from across the league. He has been on the NFL beat since 2005 and joined SI in 2016. Breer began his career covering the New England Patriots for the MetroWest Daily News and the Boston Herald from 2005 to ’07, then covered the Dallas Cowboys for the Dallas Morning News from 2007 to ’08. He worked for The Sporting News from 2008 to ’09 before returning to Massachusetts as The Boston Globe’s national NFL writer in 2009. From 2010 to 2016, Breer served as a national reporter for NFL Network. In addition to his work at Sports Illustrated, Breer regularly appears on NBC Sports Boston, 98.5 The Sports Hub in Boston, FS1 with Colin Cowherd, The Rich Eisen Show and The Dan Patrick Show. A 2002 graduate of Ohio State, Breer lives near Boston with his wife, a cardiac ICU nurse at Boston Children’s Hospital, and their three children.

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