Los Angeles Rams: Jared Goff wasn’t the problem in playoffs
With rumors swirling about Jared Goff’s future with the Los Angeles Rams, it bears repeating that he wasn’t the reason LA’s season ended.
The Los Angeles Rams entered their offseason after a 32-18 drubbing in the NFC Divisional Round courtesy of the Packers. This came after their upset victory over the Seahawks in the Wild Card Round in which Jared Goff stepped in at quarterback after John Wolford was injured.
With the loss has come some interesting rumors that the Rams might be looking to move on from Goff this offseason. There’s been buzz that if Goff is retained, there will be a competition between him and Wolford for the starting quarterback job in 2021. All of this seems really dramatic considering Goff took the Rams to the Super Bowl just two years ago and didn’t even play poorly in 2020.
Goff finished the 2020 season with 3,952 passing yards, 20 touchdowns and 13 interceptions. He missed the Week 17 finale due to a thumb injury and had Goff appeared in the final game of the regular season, he’d have recorded his third straight 4,000-yard season.
Goff wasn’t the starter in the Wild Card game because he was still recovering from the surgery he’d had on his thumb less than two weeks prior. He was only inserted into the offense because Wolford had to exit the game and played respectably considering the circumstances, throwing for 155 yards and a touchdown in the 30-20 win over Seattle.
The former No. 1 overall pick played pretty well in the loss to Green Bay too. He wasn’t spectacular, but he managed to throw for 174 yards and a touchdown despite recently having thumb surgery. While the Rams didn’t look great in their loss to the Packers, it wasn’t Goff’s fault the typically strong defense couldn’t stop Aaron Rodgers and company.
Jared Goff might not be in a Los Angeles Rams uniform next season and that seems ridiculous.
The nature of the NFL when it comes to quarterbacks has changed a lot in recent years. We’re seeing the Eagles move on from Carson Wentz, who was taken just one pick after Goff in the 2016 NFL Draft, and Wentz was nearly an MVP candidate at one point. If teams don’t have a Patrick Mahomes, they’re willing to keep searching until they have one.
The Rams’ offense isn’t the same red hot unit that it was in 2018 when the team went 13-3 and lost the Super Bowl, but a lot of that is because of the decline and later release of Todd Gurley, who made that offense so special.
Even with that said, Goff hasn’t played poorly enough that the Rams should be moving on from him. He wasn’t the reason the team bowed out in the Divisional Round and he was a big reason as to why the team even made it that far in the first place.
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