Jared Goff had the best touchdown-to-turnover ratio in the NFL last season. At one point, he went 10 full games and nearly 400 pass attempts without throwing a pick, a streak that stretched into this season. It was a welcome turn of events for a quarterback who committed the most turnovers in the league from 2018-21.
Is Goff's past catching up to him? No one's writing off the strides he's made in Detroit, which are demonstrably real, but Goff has committed six turnovers in his last two games: three picks against the Bears and three fumbles against the Packers. The Lions were lucky to only lose once.
"That’s the difference right there," Dan Campbell said Tuesday on 97.1 The Ticket. "It’s too much and it’s two games in a row that we’ve gotten down two scores early in the game and it just takes us out of a rhythm. We gotta get back to what we do, man, take care of the ball and play our style of football."
Goff knows it. He and Campbell talked about it Monday morning, and he's always the first to point the finger at himself. Two of the picks against Chicago were due to poor reads on balls over the middle; the other was a timing error after Sam LaPorta got knocked off his route. The fumbles against the Packers were each their own, a ball knocked out of his hand as he was trying to pass, a strip from behind as he was scrambling past the line of scrimmage, and a strip-sack as the pocket collapsed on fourth down when the ball would have gone back to Green Bay regardless.
"You look at them and you say which ones you think you could fix and then some of them is just sh*t happens, excuse me, but some of them it just happens," Goff said Tuesday on 97.1 The Ticket. "But there’s certainly things I can fix to make sure I’m taking care of the ball better."
The common theme against Green Bay was a break-down in protection. The Lions' typically strong offensive line wasn't up to its own standard. That's step one in reducing the turnovers; Goff will always be a vulnerable quarterback when exposed to pressure. He also needs to do a better job of handling it, which is step two. That means A) making quicker decisions in the pass game and B) protecting the football when he leaves the pocket.
"There’s always things I can do," Goff said. "For me personally in this last game, how do I tuck the ball away and not get stripped when I'm scrambling like I was? That will be a point of emphasis for me this week, and maybe there are some things in my drop that I’d like to improve that tend to slip as the season goes on because you just don’t have as much time to work on it.
"Every week you watch the film and you see some things, and I try to give myself an action plan throughout the week to get better for the following game."
Two sloppy games by Goff don't erase two strong years. He's been one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL since midway through the 2021 season, his first in Detroit. He has a chance to respond Sunday in one of the most raucous environments in the NFL against a Saints defense that has the second most interceptions and fourth most takeaways in the league.
Campbell, for his part, "is not getting worried." In fact, he said he loves the fact that "it's doom and gloom outside our building" because "this is when we find out what we’re made of."
"I love our team. I love where we’re at," he said. "I know the guys that we have in the locker room, I know these coaches, so this will be good."
Goff, likewise, is hungry for the home stretch, starting Sunday in the Superdome.
"This is the final push for us, and it’s not doom and gloom at all," he said. "We don’t ride the roller coaster that the outside world tends to ride. We know where we’re at and what we have in front of us, and we’re excited to go to New Orleans and play well."