The next time Jared Goff wins a football game — especially if it’s a fourth-quarter comeback or if he, heaven forbid, tosses a walk-off touchdown — you can bet the internet will blow up with callbacks to the image the Lions released earlier this week.
Goff was at a media shoot, and a couple of his teammates — Kerby Joseph and Tracy Walker — had just fastened their diamond-studded necklaces around the quarterback’s neck. He was wearing his uniform except for his helmet, which is a good thing, because the facemask would’ve hidden the blue-tinted Buffs sunglasses covering his eyes.
He was smiling. So were his defensive teammates, and why wouldn’t they be?
They’d just blinged up their QB, and he wore it pretty icily, Buffs and all. The Lions released one of the photos on their social media accounts with the caption: “I’m so icy” — a nod to the diamonds around his neck and a play on the stoic public image of the Lions’ signal-caller.
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The worlds-colliding image will become a meme if Goff plays as well this season as he did over the last 10 games of last season — a kind of homage to the “I’m him” vibe that subtly flows through his veins, not that Goff would ever say it out loud. He’s too understated for that, at least for now.
But the fun he and Joseph and Walker clearly had in the photos lets us in on the confidence Goff is carrying himself with these days, and the confidence he is inspiring in his teammates.
It’s confidence he hasn’t always had.
Remember how he was viewed when the Lions traded for him two years ago? You can bet Goff does, too.
He was considered a toss-in, an add-in, a piece to make the salaries work when Brad Holmes sent Matthew Stafford to the Los Angeles Rams. The centerpiece of that deal were the two first-round picks, not Goff. At least that’s how it seemed at the time.
Here are the players the Lions drafted with the picks the Rams sent: Jameson Williams, Josh Paschal, Ifeatu Melifonwu, Jahmyr Gibbs, Sam LaPorta, Brodric Martin.
Now, Holmes had to use some of his own picks to combine with the Rams’ picks to get Paschal in 2022 and LaPorta and Martin in 2023. Still, the Lions’ general manager couldn’t have maneuvered as he did without the 2022 first- and third-round picks and the 2023 first-rounder he got for Stafford.
Obviously, it’s too early to say what kind of players these six will be. Most of them show promise. But even if they all hit big, will they be as good as what Goff showed last season? When he threw 17 touchdowns and one interception — ONE — over the final 10 games (in which the Lions went 8-2)?
Probably not. Which means Goff, and not the first-round picks, may well end up being the primary prize in the Stafford trade; that was almost inconceivable two years ago.
Just not to Goff. Or to Holmes, who fought from almost the beginning the notion that his new quarterback was a “bridge quarterback,” meant to hold the spot until the franchise could find somebody better.
“I think what Jared has done this year … he captained the ship of a top-three offense, and I want to say he was top-10 statistically in most of the passing categories,” Holmes said right before the 2023 draft when asked if he’d consider drafting a quarterback in the first round. “I mean, we’re going to make sure every stone is unturned, but I do think that Jared has proven (to) everybody that he is a starting quarterback for us.”
That is no longer in doubt. He is the immediate future — and perhaps the long-term future as well if he signs an extension (with two years left on his contract).
Goff hasn’t said much about his goals beyond this fall. Nor have the Lions.
It’s clear, though, that the team is counting on him to keep improving, and that it believes he is good enough to get this team to the playoffs and do some damage. It’s clear Goff feels this way, too, and not just because he let his teammates style him up in ice.
Said Campbell: “He hung in there, and I think what you are seeing as a guy who just put his head down and went back to work and worked on what he could, tried to improve on what he could, and now his confidence is really, it has really grown, and along the way he has matured as a quarterback.”
It wasn’t easy. It never is.
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But consider that Goff went from losing his first seven starts in the NFL to playing in a Super Bowl his third year, then was traded two years later. That’ll mess with your head. So will losing your first eight games as a starter with your new team.
Yet Goff never said a wrong word, or shirked responsibility, or blamed anyone but himself. As Campbell noted, he kept his head down and got better.
How much better can he get?
That’s the question as the Lions work toward their 2023 opener. He acknowledged this week he is better than he was when he arrived in Detroit, and better the second half of last season than he had ever been, which is no small thing, considering he already had a Pro Bowl nod in hand before the trade.
“I think as you get older and get more mature in the league that happens,” he said of the improvement. “I think I said that a handful of times last year that I thought I was playing the best football of my career and plan on continuing to do that.”
Goff is 28. By October, he will be 29, the sweet spot for NFL quarterbacks — the time when the mind and the body truly sync up. He’s just entering his prime, which means there is that possibility he will get even better.
That wasn’t the thought two years ago anywhere but in Allen Park. Looking back, it maybe should have been. Not that Goff would ever say anything.
He feels it, though. That’s human nature.
Just as it is to smile when teammates drape their jewelry around you and laugh at the icy reflection. The meme is waiting. Goff has a chance to unleash it.
Contact Shawn Windsor: 313-222-6487 or swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @shawnwindsor.