Don’t let the dollar amount fool you. Jared Goff’s is only masquerading as good. He’s an expensive Mitchell Trubisky and nothing more.
When he didn’t know where the sun went, that was bad. When he couldn’t even achieve 7-9 B.S. with Jeff Fisher as his coach, that was worse. When he couldn’t lead his team to a single touchdown in Super Bowl LIII, that was the worst.
Jared Goff came into the NFL as potentially a better version of Matt Ryan, but through 3.5 years, he’s just an expensive Mitchell Trubisky.
It hurts, but it’s true. The Rams didn’t learn from their 2010 mistake by overpaying for a starting quarterback that wasn’t worth the contract. Sam Bradford and his floppy sleeves played so poorly in St. Louis that Stan Kroenke had enough of the losing and moved his team to Los Angeles. Bradford got hurt all the time and got paid like an oil tycoon by drinking the Rams’ milkshake.
For the last two years, Rams general manager Les Snead has thrown around money at random people in the building like Harry Dunne or Lloyd Christmas did at that Aspen Owl Banquet. Kroenke might be married to a Wal-Mart heiress, but that doesn’t mean you need to pay the 1997 Toyota Camry of NFL quarterbacks like he’s a Maserati. Trubisky’s grandma loved that Camry so dearly.
But let’s not hate on this expensive Camry too much. It got the Rams where they wanted to go, as in back to the Super Bowl in Atlanta. Unfortunately, the Evil Empire New England Patriots refused to get 11 personnel-ed to death by prodigal son Sean McVay. They figured out the Rams’ dirty little secret: Goff is about as useless inside of 15 seconds as a sprinter going up against Usain Bolt.
He might be able to throw a really good deep ball and he may look competent behind all that fancy window dressing orchestrated by his young, Jon Gruden-disciple head coach. But if you ask Goff to pull off “Spider 2 Y Banana” without McVay telling him it’s a pass to the fullback, he’s going to slip on the peel. There was always money in the banana stand until Snead goofed by paying Goff.
On Sunday Night Football, we will see some things out of these two former Pro Bowl quarterbacks that won’t be going to Orlando this year. Trubisky will average fewer yards per attempt than his wingspan and his head coach Matt Nagy will long for his days of football undergrad at the Andy Reid School of Clock Management at Kansas City Football University.
Goff will fake-diagnose the Chicago defense before the play clock runs down, watch the Bears defense change on him like clockwork with 15 ticks left, get confused again and wait until Khalil Mack drives him into the USC Trojans turf like he’s still playing at Cal. McVay will long for another disaster in primetime by Kirk Cousins back in the nation’s capital. Yes, he will like that very much.
At the end of the day, Goff will still look up at the sky and wonder if the sun’s going to the left or to the right this evening.
Well, let’s hope so because like Derek Zoolander, Trubisky is not an ambiturner, dammit. No matter what McVay calls it, whether it’s Blue Steel, Ferrari or Le Tigre, it’s all the same look because 11 personnel is and always will be 11 personnel! If you’ve taken the crazy pills as Snead has in thinking that Goff belongs in the same galaxy as Ryan, Earth to Matilda, hello? It’s Jared Goff!