Jared Goff had a lot of doubters when he arrived in Detroit. Two years later, he's made believers out of most of them.
After playing like one of the top 10 quarterbacks in the NFL this season, Goff has established himself as QB1 for the Lions moving forward. Not that Brad Holmes and the Lions ever doubted him themselves.
Holmes acquired Goff from the Rams in the Matthew Stafford trade with the belief that the two-time Pro Bowler, who had been kicked to the curb by the organization that drafted him first overall, could resurrect his career in Detroit.
Now he's a three-time Pro Bowler.
"It always feel good to play well and there’s always a million narratives that go on, certainly when you play quarterback," Goff told Kevin Clark this week on the Slow News Day podcast. "Breaking those narratives is sometimes harder than people creating them."
The narrative upon his departure from the Rams was that all of Goff's success owed to Sean McVay. And the narrative upon his arrival to the Lions was that he was a salary dump and a stopgap quarterback, a price Detroit was forced to pay for better draft picks.
Meanwhile, Holmes tried to tell everybody, "Part of the compensation that we received in the trade, I know a lot of people talk about the picks, but a lot of it was just being able to acquire Jared."
Holmes, to be fair, looked foolish early last season when Goff looked like one of the weaker quarterbacks in the league. Look at him now: Goff just finished fifth in the NFL in Total Quarterback Rating and Holmes has two first-round picks in the second straight draft for his troubles.
"I think back, sometimes when one team doesn’t believe in you, it doesn’t mean that everyone doesn’t believe in you," said Goff. "I think that’s what may have gotten confused amongst the national audience, is that (just because) one group of people didn’t, doesn’t mean everyone didn’t."
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Other highlights from Goff's interview with The Ringer:
On Dan Campbell: "The main thing that people don’t know about him is his intelligence. And maybe more importantly, his emotional intelligence: how much he’s able to feel the room and understand how to coach different guys and how to be a leader. He’s one of the best leaders I’ve been around. But I think the intelligence in X’s and O’s as well, in football, in understanding the whole 22 in everything we’re trying to do offensively and defensively is not something that he’ll often speak about to the media. And maybe it’s because he wants people to think that he’s a meathead, I don’t know, but he’s not. He’s very smart and he’s very in-tune with everything that’s going on."
On what he's learned about Detroit as a sports city: "The passion is unmatched. It’s unlike anything I’ve experienced. Not to knock any of my former fanbases, but when I played at Cal in the Pac-12, it’s not like the SEC. It’s fun, but it’s not the SEC. And then I went to LA and the Rams were brand-new back there and the home games weren’t always majority Rams fans. And that’s just the product of building a fanbase there. But coming to Detroit and being able to experience that is so fun. And not just football, but hockey and basketball and baseball with the Tigers, it’s a whole lot of fun and I’ve enjoyed it.
On the differences between between LA fans and Detroit fans: In LA, people want photos, they want to take selfies. And in Detroit, they just want to say hi, or say good luck or, 'Hey, go Lions.' That’s not to say the people in LA don’t say that, too, but I guess it’s more of an Instagram world in LA and in Detroit it’s not quite that much."
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