Detroit Lions quarterback Jared Goff stopped by Brad Holmes’ office one day last December as his first season in Detroit was coming to an end.
Goff was in the midst of one of the most trying stretches of his career. Dumped by the Los Angeles Rams 11 months earlier in their trade for Matthew Stafford, Goff played subpar, mistake-prone football in his first half-season as a Lion, then spent the next two months battling an assortment of injuries.
He strained his oblique during warmups before the Lions’ Nov. 14 tie with the Pittsburgh Steelers, when he played through the injury but struggled to throw the ball downfield, then bruised his knee in a Week 15 upset of the Arizona Cardinals.
Goff missed two games with his knee injury and tested positive for COVID-19, but his play picked up late in the season, after a change in offensive play-callers and following the addition of his former Rams teammate, wide receiver Josh Reynolds, and Holmes wanted to reassure his quarterback his toughness and ability to weather the bad times were appreciated.
“We were talking, I said, ‘Just be patient. Help is coming,’” Holmes told the Free Press earlier this month. “I wanted him to know that. I wanted him to know, I’m going to put some weapons around you now.”
Not one to air his frustrations publicly or take them up the hierarchy of the team, Goff nodded and gave Holmes a gentle grin, then went out and led the Lions to a feel-good win in their season finale against the Green Bay Packers.
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Holmes reiterated his point — help is on its way — when the two met again in their exit meeting after the season, and when the first vestige of aid came a few months later when the Lions re-signed Reynolds before the start of free agency, Goff sent Holmes a simple text message of thanks: Let’s go.
Goff fired off another excited text when the Lions signed DJ Chark to a free-agent deal in mid-March, and when Holmes traded up to the No. 12 pick in the first round of April’s draft to take Alabama receiver Jameson Williams, Goff blew up his general manager’s phone not long after the pick was announced on TV.
“He was like, ‘Oh, man, Jameson!’” Holmes recalled. “Every single time we made an acquisition, he was texting me like, ‘Let’s (bleeping) go!’”
With Reynolds, Chark and Amon-Ra St. Brown headlining a receiving corps that will add Williams somewhere around midseason, a former top-10 pick (T.J. Hockenson) at tight end, and D’Andre Swift running behind a veteran offensive line that, when healthy, stacks up with any in the NFL, the Lions have surrounded Goff with a promising group of talent at every offensive position.
Their investment — the Lions have committed the 10th-highest percent of their adjusted salary cap to offensive players, according to Spotrac, and have the fifth-highest spend per offensive player in the league — has put an expectation for greater returns on their quarterback, and that fact has not been lost on Goff or Holmes entering Sunday’s season-opener against the Philadelphia Eagles.
Goff, with more playmakers around him and an offense tailored to his liking, has a chance to prove he is more than the bridge quarterback many assumed when the Lions acquired him in January 2021.
The Lions expect that to happen, but have two 2023 first-round picks and an out in Goff’s contract after this season if it does not work out.
“I hate to use that term, make or break,” Holmes said, parroting a reporter’s question. “But I think it’s pretty evident that he is the starting quarterback and a lot relies and hinges on that position for team success. And so we put a lot around him, we put a lot of trust in him, we put a lot of support in him, but I just want him to go out there and play free and play with the confidence that he’s been playing with so far this camp.”
‘Whole motivation’
Goff’s play in training camp was a revelation even to those who know him best.
He was more decisive with his reads, more aggressive with his throws and he carried himself with more confidence on the field.
Holmes, who was director of college scouting when the Rams made Goff the first pick of the 2016 draft, said Goff was better this training camp than he was at any point during his five seasons in L.A.
“People see just that contrast, ‘Man, he didn’t look like this last year,’” Holmes said. “But me and (assistant GM) Ray (Agnew, another ex-Rams executive), we’ve seen him look like this before. Now, I will say this: This is the best that I’ve seen him look. I even go back to ’17 and ’18, like those two years where he was on fire and I would say just he’s looked better.”
Goff led the Rams to an 11-5 record and NFC West title in his first full season as a starter in 2017, then won 13 games and helped the Rams reach the Super Bowl in 2018.
He was surrounded by exceptional talent both years — Rams running back Todd Gurley was NFL Offensive Player of the Year in 2017, and defensive tackle Aaron Donald won Defensive Player of the Year both seasons — but he also played high-level football.
In 2017, Goff led the NFL in yards per completion (12.9), and in 2018 he set career-highs with 4,688 yards passing and 32 touchdowns. The Rams, however, failed to score a touchdown in their 13-3 Super Bowl loss to the New England Patriots, and Goff’s performance that game — he was 19 of 38 passing and was sacked four times — was the kindling Rams coach Sean McVay needed to nudge him out of town.
Goff said playing in the Super Bowl was “an experience I’ll never forget” and “an experience hopefully I’ll have again sooner than later.” And reaching that game again is his “whole motivation” for playing now.
“I’ve been fortunate enough to — financially I’m not concerned about anything, I’m trying to win now,” Goff said. “It’s not that way for everybody, but for me, I’ve been fortunate to be in that position where all I have to focus now is how do I make myself better, how do I make them better, how do I make the team better and ultimately get to that ultimate goal of winning the Super Bowl? And that’s the only reason we play is to win that game and get to that game and to play in it and win it.
“And I was four quarters away, but didn’t get it done so how do we get back there and how do I do my best to get back there? And it starts — I know it’s cliché, but it starts with one game at a time and winning our division, or just getting into the playoffs somewhere, somehow and then you go from there. But it starts — very, very cliché — but it starts with Philly. That’s how it has to be.”
Building a playbook
Whether or not Sunday’s game against the Eagles turns out to be the first step in a magical season, Goff’s road to redemption was paved with the work he put in this spring.
Chark said Goff reached out to him the day after he signed with the Lions, and two weeks later Goff hosted a few get-to-know-you workouts for Chark, St. Brown and Reynolds in L.A.
When Goff returned to Detroit this spring, he and new Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson hunkered down in the team’s Allen Park practice facility for a weekend — a weekend Johnson was supposed to be in Las Vegas with friends — and spent three eight-hour days refining the team’s playbook over delivery from Chick-fil-A.
Johnson worked closely with Goff during the second half of last season, when he served as pass game coordinator after Lions coach Dan Campbell stripped then-coordinator Anthony Lynn of play-calling duties. And as he built his new playbook, he wanted Goff’s input every step of the way.
“It was really the foundation of what we we’re going to do this year,” Johnson said. “It was some things that I’ve done in my past that he has not had exposure to, just kind of talking that out. But then also we went back to some of his Rams tape and kind of went through what he did well, what he liked. ‘Hey, I love this concept, would love to get this in.’”
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Together, Goff and Johnson filled the white board in the Lions’ staff room with “Beautiful Mind” like scribbles. They talked purpose and discussed play designs and got comfortable with each other’s likes and dislikes.
Johnson said the Lions’ offense “is not going to be the Detroit Rams,” but there are concepts built into the playbook that Goff excelled at in L.A.
“We sat there and watched a million plays,” Goff said. “Some of it he felt, ‘Awesome, we’ll do that.’ Some of it he’d go, ‘OK, I don’t like that. We’re going to do it this way.’ So it was very give and take. And then in the keeper game, like fakes and rollouts and stuff that we did at an extremely high level while I was there, how did we do that? And him wanting to implement that was so important and cool for me to be a part of, and for him to want that from me is awesome.”
Goff said he never has had a think-tank session like that before with a coach, though he noted this also was “the first time in my career I had a first-time play-caller and first time in my career I’ve been seven years in the NFL.”
“I’ve been able to be much more involved in what we’re doing offensively than I ever have, and that’s proved dividends, at least early on in training camp,” Goff said. “Who knows what that means, right? But we’re running plays that me and Ben kind of came together with, so like I feel like a lot of ownership in it and I feel like when the play’s called that’s a play that I suggested, I better make it work. So there is that ownership there that I feel like I’ve earned and that he’s a first-year guy, leaned on me a little bit there.
“It’s been fun working with him, but I think that in that regard, it’s prepared me well to hopefully play well.”
Renewed determination
Ultimately, that’s what the Lions need — Goff to play well — if they are going to take the major step forward they envision this year.
Last season, Goff finished with his fewest passing yards (3,245), touchdowns (19) and yards per completion (9.8) since his rookie year. He ranked at or near the bottom of the NFL in aggression marks like intended air yards per attempt (6.6) and throws into tight windows (10.7%). And, most disappointing to him, he went 3-10-1 as a starter.
“He knew he didn’t like what happened last year,” Holmes said. “He knew that, and he knew what he had to do. And he knows what he’s got to do this year.”
If Goff plays well and the Lions win enough games, he could entrench himself as the starter for the foreseeable future.
At 27 years old, Goff still is in the prime of his career, and after being left for dead by McVay and others, teammates have sensed a renewed determination about him this year.
“I think he just got that chip back on his shoulder,” Reynolds said. “I couldn’t say this for sure, but in L.A. maybe he got a little complacent but then with that whole deal, coming here, putting that chip back on your shoulder. You got everybody talking about this is the end of Jared Goff. Shit, he’s here to show people, I ain’t going nowhere.”
Johnson said he is certain Goff has heard and seen the criticism of his play, including rankings that commonly put him in a lower tier of starting quarterbacks in the NFL.
“I do think that drives him a little bit,” Johnson said. “Just he wants to prove them wrong, prove everybody wrong.”Goff said it’s not criticism that drives him but his desire to succeed.
He downplayed what this season means to his future in Detroit, but he’s smart enough to know the realities of the league.
“It’s not like I’m putting on this façade and trying to pretend to people that I can do something,” Goff said. “It’s like, no, they respect me — at least I feel like they do, right? — and I know what I can do and I have confidence in myself. There’s peaks and valleys there. How do you come out of the valleys? How do you get to the peaks? And I think there’s a million examples of that in our league every year of guys that didn’t have the best year prior and come out and be great, and vice versa, had a great year and they don’t have a great one the next year, and what that reason is I don’t know. But my career has been that way as well. It happens to some guys and how do you stay (good) as much as possible is the ultimate goal.”
Contact Dave Birkett: dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.