We can all acknowledge this: the Lions' offense laid an egg in its debut under John Morton. Jared Goff will be the first to tell you, "Just not even close to good enough for us offensively."
"Got a ton of things to work and improve on," Goff said Tuesday on 97.1 The Ticket. "The good news is, we got time to fix it. It’s gotta happen in a hurry. There will be certainly be some urgency from all of us to get those things fixed, and it starts with me."
We can also acknowledge this, even if Goff might not say it himself: the O-line needs to be better. Otherwise, opinions vary on why the offense looked so sloppy in Morton's first game calling plays. This is where Goff pushes back on some of the theories floated by fans.
For one, Morton is in the booth while former coordinator Ben Johnson called plays from the sidelines. Asked if that matters to him one way or the other, Goff said, "No. I think that’s foolish."
Goff and the Lions spent most of their season-opening 27-13 loss to the Packers going nowhere. Green Bay's defense dominated the trenches with four-man fronts and dropped seven into coverage to keep a lid on Detroit's playmakers. Almost half of Goff's 31 completions went to his running backs and he hit just one explosive throw, to Sam LaPorta. The Lions didn't score a touchdown until garbage time.
Asked how he'd respond to criticisms that the Lions weren't aggressive enough driving the ball downfield and became too predictable, Goff laughed and said, "How would I respond? How much time you got?"
"The downfield thing, we called the plays downfield, they covered them, so I checked it down to our backs. And I don’t think that’s any different than certain games in the past," he said. "We call the shots, if they’re not open I check it down, if they are open I’d like to think I take those chances.
"So, yeah, we gotta find a way to get those (routes) open more often. I think that maybe partially answers it. But we will. We’ll figure it out. We’ve got a pretty fast guy in Jameson Williams who can get down there, and I like to throw it to him downfield as well as a handful of other guys. So as we go, those shots will come and we’ll continue to find them."
If you're panicking about Detroit's offense after one game, Goff would tell you to relax. While they lost a couple key pieces up front, the Lions still have the weapons that made this one of the most dangerous units in the NFL for the last three seasons. Goff said that "it's impossible to try to compare" Morton's offense to Johnson's, because "it’s a completely new thing that we’re doing with him — not a new system, but a new communication."
"It’s a new human," said Goff, "so there’s different things going on. I think back to 2022 when Ben was in his first year and we started 1-6. Not by any means saying that’s where we’re headed, but I think there were growing pains there, too, offensively. And then we got into a good rhythm halfway through the year. Certainly we want to get into that rhythm this week, though. We don’t want to wait until Week 6 or 7 to find that out. But I think that’s natural when there’s a new coordinator, a new guy calling plays."
The offense actually fared well early in Johnson's tenure as coordinator, but he had the benefit of having coordinated the passing game the season prior. Morton was also part of the coaching staff in 2022, but spent the past two seasons as passing game coordinator for the Broncos. Now that he's back in Detroit, "He’s getting used to us still, we’re getting used to him still and some of that progression is still happening," said Goff.
"But it’s all moving in the right direction, it’s all stuff I’m optimistic about, and by no means am I worried about any of it," he said.