The "Goff has to step up in year 3" narrative bugs me

[Farr Be It]

Was it Joe Curley or Curly Joe

“Moe, Larry cheese, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop”

Couldn’t resist, too easy

Not knocking Jake, he does good work

 

[Loyal]

So what if last year's offense, gets a few more opportunities/drives every game? Think Super Bowl 35 winners, Baltimore Ravens. Except our O is better than that team's..

 

[WestCoastRam]

I thought Joe Curley's analysis was right on. Goff looked good in OTAs, Curley was looking for more consistency out of him.

I think for Goff to become elite he needs to up the consistency across the board, be more consistent in placement on deep balls, get better at throwing receivers open and if he could create offense when plays break down, he'll definitely be in the elite conversation.

As @dieterbrock said, Goff will most likely regress if he doesn't improve at all as NFL defenses will have a ton more tape on him. I expect Goff to improve though but will it be enough to not just stay at the level he is now -- but go beyond it.

 

[Legatron4]

Goff will most likely regress if he doesn't improve at all as NFL defenses will have a ton more tape on him.

This is such a myth. Teams have literally 17 years of tape on Tom Brady and that still hasn't stopped him. You still have to cover the receivers and stop Todd Gurley.

 

[WestCoastRam]

This is such a myth. Teams have literally 17 years of tape on Tom Brady and that still hasn't stopped him. You still have to cover the receivers and stop Todd Gurley.

Everything on a message board is a myth. Come on. And please, let's not compare Goff to Tom Brady. I'm a fan but I'm not gonna compare him to the GOAT (that cheating bastard).

 

[Akrasian]

Certainly, it's true that there could be enough more injuries to hide any improvement in Goff. However, I do expect improvement from the TEs, and I think Cooks will be much better than Watkins was. Watkins did some very nice things, but he never learned the system, and did not always run out routes - which might have been because he never fully learned the system. Plus Cooks already seems to be a favorite target of Goff. Oh, and he's fast. Very fast.

Add in that McVay should be even better at play calling, since he'll know the team better, and will have more weapons that he really, really wants.

So even with some things going wrong, with Goff seeing the field better thanks to experience, I see an improvement. Probably won't have a 4/1 TD to interception ratio as he'll be more aggressive at times, but I expect more yards and - yes - TDs.

 

[RamFan503]

Where, or what, is "the big step" or "next step"?

Next step is simply him improving every year - which he will do. Will that result in far better stats? Quite possibly not. It will likely be more that he leads game winning drives or makes some of those plays he missed on last season. I think he was a little off and inaccurate in his first playoff game. That is another area I think will be “next step” territory.

 

[kurtfaulk]

This is such a myth. Teams have literally 17 years of tape on Tom Brady and that still hasn't stopped him. You still have to cover the receivers and stop Todd Gurley.

That's because the cheats knew all the defenses' hand singles. After that they had gronk.

.

 

[CGI_Ram]

http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap30...-goff-mcvay-pushing-rams-even-further-in-2018

Jared Goff: McVay pushing Rams even further in 2018
Sean McVay captured NFL Coach of the Year honors while leading one of the most dramatic franchise renaissances in NFL history, wrestling control of the NFC West away from Seattle in his debut season with the Rams.

What does the league's latest offensive mastermind have in store for an encore?

Left unsatisfied with his team's playoff loss to the Falcons, McVay is determined to push a star-studded roster to new heights in 2018.

"First of all, he's super smart," quarterback Jared Goff told NFL Network analyst Willie McGinest on Wednesday's edition of NFL Total Access. "He knows what he's doing. At the same time, though, I think he's got absolutely no ego and is just trying to help us win.

"Obviously he's done a tremendous job so far, and so far this offseason you've seen his want to push it even further. And we're right there with him. It's an exciting time."

It's no secret that McVay is exceptionally bright. When Dan Orlovsky arrived at Rams training camp last summer, the former Lions backup quarterback recently relayed on Good Morning Football, he turned to Goff and said, "Bud, you have no idea how lucky you are. This guy's brilliant."

The key that unlocks the Holy Grail of championship-level football is a quarterback possessed of coach-like powers of perception at the line of scrimmage. Going back nearly a full century to the golden days of Notre Dame's fabled Four Horsemen backfield, legendary coach Knute Rockne had established the platonic ideal of offense with quarterback Joe Stuhldreher functioning as the head coach's "alter ego" out on the gridiron.

The Rams took that concept to new heights last season, rushing Goff to the line of scrimmage with enough time for McVay to survey the defensive alignment and provide his quarterback with an audible before the headset shuts off with 15 seconds remaining on the play clock.

To be clear, it's not the methodology that is revolutionary. Play-callers have been whispering in their quarterback's ears ever since the prototype radio receiver installed in former Browns quarterback George Ratterman's helmet went haywire in 1956, picking up outside interference from a local taxi company fielding cab calls.

Goff's field-tilting advantage lies in the beautiful mind guiding him at the line of the scrimmage. Similar to former Bengals mad scientist Sam Wyche's no-huddle attack in the 1980s, McVay has done deep studies on substitution patterns, seeking the exact moment on the play clock when defenses adjust to his personnel.

When the Around The NFL Podcast sat down with Les Snead in late March, the Rams general manager provided a telling response to the question of McVay's influence on Goff's pre-snap acumen.

"Like anything there's 32 different head coaches, 32 different offensive coordinators," Snead explained, "and how they utilize their time with the QB before the snap is probably where the differences occur, where edges are gained or not. And really, really good coaches take advantage of that."

Edge is the key word here. It's no coincidence that legendary coaches Bill Walsh and Don Shula each penned memoirs with edge in the title. The most advanced NFL minds have always pushed the boundaries in search of their fair advantage.

Now that the word is out on McVay's machinations, defensive coaches are sure to strike back with their own tricks. Might they align in a vague Cover 2 shell, for example, only to change the look once the play clock strikes 15 seconds?

As former Cardinals coach Bruce Arians has pointed out, however, that approach has its limits.

"When they just go up there and then don't snap it right away, you say, well, we'll hold our disguise," Arians explained last November, via Philly.com. "And then they snap it [quickly], and you'd better be able to play defense out of your disguise. I think it's really smart coaching."

While defenses search in vain for counter-strategies, McVay is back in the lab concocting innovations to push his team toward the promised land in his second season.

"[McVay] is like Greg Maddux," Orlovsky attested, "where he doesn't necessarily overpower you, but you have no idea what's coming and he'll make you look silly."

 

[Legatron4]

Everything on a message board is a myth. Come on. And please, let's not compare Goff to Tom Brady. I'm a fan but I'm not gonna compare him to the GOAT (that cheating bastard).

Okay how about Matt Ryan? Matt Stafford? Phillip Rivers? The list could go on. Goff will have a better feel against coverages and even more time to work with his receivers and learn the playbook. I just don't buy the whole tape thing.

 

[AvengerRam]

Alan Iverson had it right...we’re taking about practice. Not the game...practice.

I’m not going to worry about the comments of a reporter in June.

 

[Psycho_X]

He's entering his third season and he's 23. 23! His first season was wasted on shit coaching. His second season was a whole new offense with a rookie head coach. Yeah, I don't think it's a stretch to think this offense is going to be better this season and that'll be thanks to Goff in a lot of ways. He doesn't need to take a step because he already has the stats. But he will.

 

[Ram65]

I haven't heard the step up in year 3 narrative. But, on a related note, like someone else said, part of Goff's pre-draft was that he got better every year at Cal.

FWIW, Football Outsiders did some analysis of Goff, after the Atlanta game and linking the write up from the second Seattle game.

Part 1:
https://www.footballoutsiders.com/any-given-sunday/2018/any-given-sunday-falcons-over-rams

Goff took a major step forward in 2017, one for which it is almost impossible to separate credit and blame between Jeff Fisher's disaster of an offense and Sean McVay's wunderkind designs. This is no damning indictment of Goff's future -- we're 17 games into him being good and he's still learning the quarterback position. As I said, he hit some huge throws in this game. From a scouting perspective, this is the sort of stuff that made him a No. 1 pick despite his time in a spread-focused Cal offense.


But as it currently stands, he's still slightly robotic. He's still reliant on the scheme. He's making throws, but not creating throws. That, and some poor fumble luck, are why the Rams didn't find the defending NFC champions quite as easy as the teams they spanked during the regular season. As we noted a few weeks ago, the Rams had a relatively inconsistent pass offense this year. If McVay could scheme them into big plays, it happened. When it didn't, they were often more solid than good. And, in a playoff bracket this stacked, solid can get you beat.

------------

Part 2 (the link from "As we noted a few weeks ago" above)
https://www.footballoutsiders.com/any-given-sunday/2017/any-given-sunday-rams-over-seahawks

But the reason the Rams have become a potential No. 1 seed and not just a fringe playoff contender isn't the defense and special teams. We projected the Rams with the 29th-ranked offense, and instead they are sixth. You may have heard about Sean McVay's offensive turnaround, as we are hardly the only outlet to cover it. (I like Doug Farrar's view from the preseason, where he pointed out a lot of the basic things that McVay did to the offense.) Stealing Andrew Whitworth away from a Bengals team that didn't understand his value was also helpful.

But it must be pointed out that McVay's passing offense is streaky, and that this game was another data point in favor of that. The Rams have five single games with a pass offense DVOA of 50% or higher. They now, after this game, have four games with a pass offense DVOA of 10% or lower. Both games against Seattle and Arizona have had the Rams with four of their five lowest pass offense DVOA ratings of the season.

The drop-off is pretty ridiculous in both phases.

Jared Goff has been reined in fairly well by McVay, but there are still times where the quarterback looks uncertain of his first read. And while Goff now is better at recognizing when he's under pressure and throwing the ball away for a zero-yard gain, he's still not going to create much outside of the structure of the play. Goff spent a lot of the early part of this game throwing balls away under pressure.

Los Angeles is obviously a threat to anyone with how they can win in all three phases of the game, but it's worth thinking about how exploitable Goff is if his division is so keyed into him already. McVay can scheme around and create the easy yards, but Goff isn't the elevator of this offense, he's merely the driver.
-----------------------------------------------
More/related stuff here:
https://www.footballoutsiders.com/film-room/2018/film-room-falcons-defense

Perhaps the most impressive feat by the Falcons was how well they shut down the Rams' passing attack. Atlanta held Jared Goff to 5.5 adjusted net yards per attempt, well below Goff's regular season average of 7.7 adjusted net yards per attempt, which led the NFL this season. Fifth-year cornerback Robert Alford helped lead the charge in this department, as he had one of his best games of the season.

Most teams struggled to defend the Rams this year because they didn't have the personnel and athleticism to match Watkins and Robert Woods in man coverage. This wasn't the case at all for Atlanta. Having two accomplished cornerbacks like Alford and Desmond Trufant gives Atlanta room to be a bit more simple and straightforward in their coverage assignments.

The Rams broke the huddle with a 3x1 trey formation. The Rams have three receiving options on the right side of the formation and one (Watkins) on the left. Since Alford is lined up on the one-receiver side, his assignment is to take Watkins in man coverage.

This is where Alford's physical gifts give him an edge over most cornerbacks in this situation. He has no problem going step for step down the field with Watkins. Goff further aided Alford by slightly underthrowing this ball.

This is actually an area of Alford's game that has improved since the arrival of Quinn and his coaching staff. In the past, these are plays that would have been huge defensive pass interference penalties, but Alford showed off the patience and discipline he has learned over the years as he waited to bat the ball down.

Limiting Watkins to one catch for 23 yards wasn't all Alford; it was a group effort. Jones had arguably the most impressive play on Watkins at the most critical juncture in the game.

The vast majority of NFL teams don't have a middle linebacker who can match average receivers in man coverage, let alone a good receiver like Watkins. On fourth down late in the fourth quarter, with a potential comeback opportunity on the line, Jones took Watkins in man coverage and had no problem executing his assignment.

One could argue (and many have) that Jones was a little grabby with his coverage on Watkins, but it's an impressive play nonetheless. Jones has emerged into a star in his second NFL season. He's a rare defensive weapon who has no issue covering tight ends, running backs, and even some of the top receivers in the game.

Both games against Seattle and Arizona have had the Rams with four of their five lowest pass offense DVOA ratings of the season. From the article.

I rewatched week 13 game at the Cardinals. I wanted to see if Goff struggled as the article mentioned. I didn't take notes but here is what I got

Goff was 22-31-220-2-1

Woods out. Reynolds takes his place.

Rams get early lead 16-0 but Cardinals get to 16-13. Rams 19-13 as time runs out Rams settle for FG from inside the 5 yard line. McVay a bit conservative.

Goff threw INT right into the LDE's hands as stopped rush. Bang bang good defensive play but, a bad throw by Goff. Worst play of the day. Had one tipped at line not his fault good rush.

Rams take 26-13 lead with 5 Minutes remaining in the third quarter on 11 yard TD pass to Watkin.

Brockers blocks FG attempt and Rams never really challenged in 32-16 win.

Gurley was 19 rushes for 79 yards. He caught 6 for 84 yards and had the biggest catch and run of the day at 33 yards.

One big drop by Everett down the sideline on a beautiful pass by Goff. Everette did have a short slant TD earlier.

One nice side arm throw as he was falling, to Higbee for 6 yards. Some good 10-15 throws to Kupp and Watkins.

This was the Cardinals last chance to stay in the hunt I guess as they were 5-6 at the start of the game. I would say McVay played a bit conservative with a lead. Cardinals had a good pass rush but, Goff hung in and moved around to get more time as he usually does. The numbers for Goff were decent for a conservative type game plan where the Rams won big against a desperate home divisional rival. Goff was without his favorite target in Woods. I didn't see a division rival figuring out Goff or the Rams.

 

[Soul Surfer]

Don't worry about the talking heads

It's a new age in the media where you have to say inflammatory stupid stuff to even get anybody's attention anymore.

We know what's up.
Don't sweat the small stuff.

 

[LesBaker]

It's a new age in the media where you have to say inflammatory stupid stuff to even get anybody's attention anymore.

You are right about that. And in this case I'm wondering how anyone can buy into it..........

 

[MachS]

And please, let's not compare Goff to Tom Brady. I'm a fan but I'm not gonna compare him to the GOAT (that cheating bastard).

Funny because coming out of college that's exactly who Jared reminded me of. His throwing motion and footwork are pretty similar IMO.

Hopefully one day he can get on the same level!!!

 

[Soul Surfer]

You are right about that. And in this case I'm wondering how anyone can buy into it..........

Psst...

Don't tell anybody because this is just between you and me....
the average person is an idiot.

Luckily for us, being a Rams fan already makes us WELL above average.

 

[1maGoh]

Psst...

Don't tell anybody because this is just between you and me....
the average person is an idiot.

And half the population is more dumb than that.