There was a time in the not-too-distant past when it looked like Jared Goff was going to be the savior of the Los Angeles Rams.
Paired up with the then-youngest coach in the NFL, Sean McVay, after a not-so-great start to his career under Jeff Fisher, Goff turned in the best numbers of his career to that point under his new head coach, but after coming up short in the Super Bowl in February of 2019, things began to sour in LA. Before long, the Rams made the shocking decision to trade Goff to the Detroit Lions along with draft pick compensation for Matthew Stafford, and the rest, as they say, is history. The Rams won the Super Bowl, the Lions came darn close to making it, and both franchises appear happy with how the deal shook out.
Discussing the move in an appearance on the Fitz & Whit Podcast, McVay explained that, in hindsight, he probably didn’t do enough to get Goff where he needed to be and takes responsibility for that all these years later.
“When I look back the Jared Goff situation, it could have been handled better on my part. In terms of the clarity of the dialogue and the mists of that,” McVay noted.
“You never know which direction this is going to go but when you sit there and you say man I definitely had some growing up to do, I could’ve done a better job for Jared. There is a lot more respect and etiquette that he deserved in the way that was handled on my end. That was poor on my part and you want to make sure that as you try to apply your learning lessons from your mistakes, that you’re at least trying to communicate with clarity.”
As a head coach who was younger than some of his players at the time, McVay was rightfully treated like a wunderkind during his early run with the Rams, and as a result, he likely wasn’t prepared to help out a young quarterback transitioning from a non-NFL powerhouse to the NFL. He likely could have eased up on the demands of his scheme to help Goff along or even taken a little more from his college playbook to make things easier.
Is Goff a perfect player? No, he isn’t, as even now as an unquestioned franchise quarterback in Detroit, Goff still has the occasional game where fans scratch their heads and wonder what’s going on with the Berkley product. Still, Goff has shown he’s willing to take coaching and has grown better and better at each step along the way. If McVay was more open to slowly getting Goff to that point, then who knows? Maybe the Rams wouldn’t be looking for a new quarterback this offseason, no matter what happens with Stafford.
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