He doesn’t have Matthew Stafford’s rocket launcher of a right arm or penchant for squeezing passes through impossible windows, and when he declared “check downs are my friend” Friday, it caused frightening flashbacks of the Jim Bob Cooter years.
But a few minutes before Jared Goff praised his running backs’ receiving ability by embracing the check-down, the new Detroit Lions quarterback insisted he wanted to add some high-octane to the offense.
CAMP OBSERVATIONS: Bringing college play cards to NFL (kind of)
“I love to take shots,” Goff said. “I know we’re going to call a bunch of them and I hope to throw a lot of them.”
Three days into training camp, the Lions’ vertical passing game has been virtually non-existent.
Goff has lived largely off underneath routes in practices open to the media both this summer and in spring. Backups Tim Boyle and David Blough have had slightly more success throwing downfield, and on Friday, when the Lions worked heavily on third downs, they were the only quarterbacks who completed passes estimated to have traveled more than 20 yards downfield in team and seven-on-seven drills.
CARLOS MONARREZ: Applaud Taylor Decker for getting the vaccine and being a true leader
Three pad-less training camp practices are hardly indicative of the offense as a whole, but statistically Goff is coming off a season in which he ranked near the bottom of the NFL in air yards per attempt.
Among quarterbacks with at least 150 pass attempts last season, only Alex Smith and Drew Brees averaged fewer intended air yards than Goff’s 6.5 per throw.
Stafford, by comparison, ranked sixth in the NFL at 9 air yards per attempt.
Goff’s advanced passing numbers have dropped precipitously in recent years; he ranked eighth in the NFL at 8.8 air yards per attempt during the Rams’ Super Bowl season of 2018 and averaged a more middling 7.8 yards in 2019.
Asked about that fall off Friday, Goff chalked it up to circumstance.
“It all depends,” he said. “It changes every game. There’s a million different factors that go into it. I think to answer your question, I hope to throw it down the field a lot this year.”
The Lions have the speed at receiver in free agent additions Tyrell Williams and Breshad Perriman to cause problems with their deep passing game, and offensive coordinator Anthony Lynn said he hopes to unlock shot plays by running the football.
“I know he could throw the football down the field, and a lot of your deep balls come off of run-actions,” Lynn said this spring. “But run-action’s really not great if you’re not running the football well. So I think with some of the things we’re going to do, the more ways you can run the football, the more ways you can throw it down the field is the way I see it. And he’s got a strong arm.”
Play-action passes don’t often fool defenses in pad-less training camp practices, which could account for some of Goff’s check-down tendencies so far.
[ For Lions coach Dan Campbell, deciding when to play veterans this preseason is TBD ]
Whatever the case, Lions coach Dan Campbell said he’s been pleased by what he’s seen from Goff in their few months together.
“I really have,” Campbell said. “He’s been good. You can just see him from where we were in the spring to now, you can see how much more comfortable he is and how much more he has taken ownership of his offense, which is what we want.”
What Goff wants, Campbell said, is an offense full of progressive reads and big-shot pass plays.
“He loves throwing it downfield,” Campbell said. “We’re not in the world of true shot plays right now. We got throws downfield and things of that nature. I just think there’s certain things that he’s comfortable with and so we’re trying to give him those things. Which, there again is a lot of progression, but he’s been great.”
Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.