Goff talk … June to Sept. (a lot of great stuff here)

The NFL's Best Quarterbacks in Pass-Heavy Games#LARams Jared Goff is listed in the Top 10 of active QB's in terms of percentage of 40+ dropback games with a 75.0+ grade since 2006 (min. 25 games played)https://t.co/IvyP18L83G

— PFF LA Rams (@PFF_Rams) June 22, 2020

Another one 🎯 pic.twitter.com/j5iechxBv2

— HoldenCantor (@HoldenCantor) June 22, 2020

Right in stride, what an arm 🙌 pic.twitter.com/Qvz37L2Pi0

— HoldenCantor (@HoldenCantor) June 22, 2020

He’s always been money to Woods on the sideline. Accuracy on this throw was under rated too. pic.twitter.com/Zbe7nR1dV0

— Watched my Team Win the World Series (@HouLAPhx) June 22, 2020

Rams Legion@RamsLegion
Quarterbacks to throw for 4600 yards multiple times and make a Super Bowl all within there first 4 seasons

-Dan Marino
-Jared Goff

NFL casual fans:
JaReD gOFF sucks

Uninformed Rams Fans:
wHaTs wRoNg WiTh JaReD gOFF?

2018 – 13 drops
2019 – 27 drops

2018 – 151 blitzed
2019 – 219 blitzed

The entire offense under performed

— Alvin L (@alfsbones) July 8, 2020

Compare Goff in the first 5 games of 2019, when the OL was in disarray, with the last 5 games, when the OL had settled down some and was decently solid.

First 5: 4 fumbles (3 lost), 63% completions, 7 TDs & 3.1% TD percentage, 7 INTs & 3.1% INT percentage, avg. qb rating 85.94
Last 5: 0 fumbles (0 lost), 66.2% completions, 11 TDs & 5.09% TD percentage, 4 INTs &1.85% INT percentage, avg. qb rating 98.6

It’s not stellar but not bad for an OL starting 3 inexperienced injury replacements, which ought to be (and usually is) the kiss of death.

—

Goff & pressure. pressurex

First some stats. This is a list of qb pressures allowed per game from 2019. My numbers are from PFR.

7 or more pressures = red, 6 or fewer pressures = blue.

Carolina W 8 pressures allowed (p.a.)
N.O. W 8 p.a.
Cleveland W 6 p.a.
Tampa L 20 p.a.
Seattle L 7 p.a.
SF L 11 p.a.
Atlanta W 3 p.a.
Cinn. W 4 p.a.
Pitts. L 15 p.a.
Chicago W 2 p.a.
Balt. L 8 p.a.
Arizona W 5 p.a.
Seattle W 7 p.a.
Dallas L 8 p.a.
SF L 12 p.a.
Arizona W 4 p.a.

The QB was pressured 7 or more times in 10 games and the Rams went 3-7 in those games.

The QB was pressured less than 7 times in 6 games and the Rams went 6-0 in those games.

Also–when they allowed more than 8 pressures (4 games) they went 0-4.

In games where they allowed 7 or 8 pressures (6 games) they went 3-3.

There were more pressures allowed in 2919 than in 2017 and 2018. Goff would have been the same qb all 3 years so you can’t say the pressures aren’t on him–obviously it’s the OL & other blockers.

BUT interestingly he also was sacked at a much lower rate than in the 2 previous years. (Sack percentage = 5.0% in 2017, 5.60% in 2018, & 3.4% in 2019). Goff must be contributing to those lower sack numbers. How else do you explain that while they’re allowing more pressures than the previous 2 years they’re also giving up fewer sacks? To me that has to mean the qb is contributing to the lower sack percentage.

Yet at the same time they are throwing the ball on 7 step drops more than any other team.

from https://seahawkswire.usatoday.com/2020/05/14/seahawks-qb-russell-wilson-most-suited-for-7-step-drop/

“As the NFL has transitioned to more of a quick passing game by default, the seven-step drop is almost a thing of the past,” Farrar writes. “Jared Goff was the only quarterback in 2019 with more than 50 attempts on seven-step drops (68)”

So more 7 step drops than other teams, more qb pressures than previously, and–fewer sacks.

…

This is here because Goff comes up.

…

Dak didn’t get his big deal. Told ya. And here’s why. pic.twitter.com/jNofz4XqJP

— Colin Cowherd (@ColinCowherd) July 16, 2020

from https://www.nfl.com/news/will-new-faces-help-mcvay-get-goff-rams-offense-back-to-form

Goff – via NFL Research – is the first Rams quarterback to connect for back-to-back seasons with 4,000-plus yards passing, but the young gunslinger’s league-high 626 passing attempts last year continued a trend of a more passing for L.A. and less success. The Rams passed on 62% of their plays in 2019, up from 56.7 during their Super Bowl season and increased form 54.6% the year prior in 2017, per NFL Research.

This article is very good.

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Rams fans, many of you have asked what Jared Goff worked on this offseason.@JourdanRodrigue got the answers from @train3DQB. I think you'll enjoy this story.https://t.co/gl5YxOrPJO

— Rich Hammond (@Rich_Hammond) July 31, 2020

===

Inside Rams QB Jared Goff’s training with 3DQB, and what’s different in 2020

Jourdan Rodrigue

https://theathletic.com/1963759/2020/07/31/inside-rams-qb-jared-goffs-training-with-3dqb-and-whats-different-in-2020/

“This is not a place you just come to work out.”

That’s a point expressed very clearly at 3DQB, a Huntington Beach, Calif.-based quarterback training facility at which the Rams’ Jared Goff has been training since 2017.

Founded by former USC baseball pitcher and coach Adam Dedeaux and renowned pitching/throwing mechanics and motion expert Tom House, 3DQB has, since its inception, attracted quarterbacks from all over the country to its campus each offseason. The idea is to blend four core concepts — functional strength and conditioning, state-of-the-art motion and mechanics analysis, mental and emotional management skills, and nutrition — into specific training plans that focus on elevating individual performance and sustaining long-term workloads and careers in America’s most violent sport.

The company attends to a variety of specific needs and age ranges of its NFL quarterback clients, who have included Goff and Eagles quarterback Carson Wentz (both QBs in their mid-20s), Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan (who is in his late 30s) and Saints quarterback Drew Brees and Bucs quarterback Tom Brady (both in their early 40s).

“I, we at 3DQB, take the training really seriously in the sense that there are specific programs we are putting together with these guys,” said Dedeaux, the grandson of legendary USC baseball coach Rod Dedeaux. “This is not a place you just come to work out. It’s not a place you just come to throw. You’re working on specific things. … Every offseason with these guys starts with, ‘What is it that you’re here to get better at?’”

Each offseason, Goff works with Dedeaux (now the company’s CEO), House, motion mechanics expert John Beck (a former BYU and NFL quarterback) and ex-Arizona State quarterback Taylor Kelly (now the quarterbacks coach at Mater Dei High) three days a week for six weeks ahead of what would normally be his April OTAs report date with the Rams. After OTAs, Goff comes back to 3DQB on the same schedule, this time for the three-to-four weeks before training camp.

But the process isn’t easy. Dedeaux and his team analyze Goff each year, and provide honest — at times, brutally honest — feedback alongside critiques gathered from Rams coaches and players.

Goff just wrapped up his most recent session with Dedeaux and his staff. The 25-year-old quarterback is entering the fifth year of his career at a pivotal time for the franchise. Rams head coach Sean McVay and offensive coordinator Kevin O’Connell hope Goff can take, in their words, “more ownership” of the offense, operate with more autonomy when things break down around him and become more consistent week over week and throw over throw.

In an extensive Q&A with Dedeaux, The Athletic was able to learn about why this type of offseason programming has been so important for Goff and what specific measures he is taking to elevate his game this season.

When you’re in the position that Jared is in right now — entering his fifth year, building comfortability with being a franchise quarterback — what are some things you see with guys making that transition from leaving your first few years of work behind and stepping into this new space?

Truth be told, I’ve had a lot of conversations with Jared about things like that. In my mind, yeah, it’s great that he got his first big contract. We were working toward that, among other things. All of these guys, in some way, shape or form, are and should be motivated by money in a way that we’re talking generational wealth that helps their families for years to come. But one of the things that we talked about numerous times is that understanding that it’s awesome that we got there, but now the intensity of our work and the expectations only go up. If there was one iota of him that would have backed off, or gotten comfortable, or anything, he would’ve been held accountable for that. That’s partially my job, to make sure that he is more committed to the work now than maybe he was three or four years ago when we first started.

This is not an area where I had to push him. We had a couple of candid conversations of, “Let’s just be sure we’re on the same page about what motivates us going forward.” The thing I love about Jared is that every year he has been one of the first ones to call me after the season, whether it has been a playoff loss, when they haven’t been to the playoffs or when they’ve been to the Super Bowl. He’s one of the first ones to start getting stuff on the calendar, to start putting a schedule of the offseason together. I’ve never had to push. If anything, I’ve had to say, “We may not have to do this much” — in terms of time commitment — “but I love the fact that you’re making it a priority.” To me, that sets him up for success in the future. He’s willing to put in the time. My job is to make sure he’s thinking deliberately about the things that he is doing, keeping him on track.

Dedeaux said that even as they design programming for Goff on the field, in the weight room and in the kitchen, they also work with him on the mental-emotional side of the game, including how he’s developing relationships with his coaches and with other players. Dedeaux said the staff gathers feedback on Goff from people throughout the team — intel — that at times is not easy for Goff to hear but is an important part of his development as a franchise quarterback — a process that he welcomes.

That is fascinating. I’d think you have to be a specific personality type to be able to welcome and absorb that kind of critique, because you would like it to make it better in certain ways … putting the ego aside.

There is no doubt. I would say that’s another part of our role here is, if we encounter somebody who is not OK accepting criticism, that’s immediately something we have to work on with them. Because this is not a league where, especially at the quarterback position, where you can be thin-skinned or not open. We say, “Honest, open and willing to change.” If you don’t have that, you’re in the wrong place because the way I look at things is, in a sense, hypercritical because I’m very detail-oriented with how they do things and what their process is. If you ask anybody I work with, (they’ll say) I’m not impressed easily. They aren’t there to impress me. The only thing they’re there to do is to get better. … I hope, in a sense, that it drives them because there is always another level.

Where were some areas that Jared wanted to improve this offseason, or areas in which you wanted to see him improve?

One thing that I basically have said across the board — and one thing that was an emphasis for him — was that with everything in the pandemic, and the fact that they aren’t going to get a lot of practice time, we kind of gathered and expect that offensive line play is going to take some time to get caught up, to get their legs underneath them, to get their communication, especially if they’re working on a new system.

The ability to move inside the pocket and throw off multiple platforms was really important. And one thing Jared had to do a lot of last year was throw off his back foot. Some of that was related to his footwork, which we wanted to clean up. Some of it was related to that understanding that he didn’t have the same space and time (to throw) that maybe he had been accustomed to, and that this year was going to be no different. We worked on the mechanics of how to be able to throw off of the back foot but not lose any of the velocity or take any more off of the arm. And then also, when you’re forced to move and you find yourself on your front foot, how do you throw off your front foot?

There are specific mechanics to doing that to where, once again, you don’t lose mechanical efficiency. It may look completely different to the untrained eye, but we are looking for specific variables of how he’s generating velocity, how he’s generating accuracy, no matter what platform he throws from — back foot, front foot, on the run. And that was a big emphasis for him this offseason.

For me (it’s) knowing, “This is going to be your reality, get used to it,” (not wanting him) to go into survival mode. While everybody else is just going to try to survive, we’re going to thrive because we worked on it. We talked about it specifically, we felt things, we didn’t like things, we moved on, we tried something else, we tweaked his footwork and tried to make things simpler for him. Just the details. Think critically about how we can make it easier.

As you coach, what are some of the benchmarks where you’re able to feel like a guy is really “getting it”?

Jared is an extremely talented thrower. And it’s awesome when he throws an unbelievable pass. But it’s not what you do. It’s how you do it around here. Now, in games, it’s going to be about what you do. But here, it’s about getting better. How you do it matters. How you do it is the reason that Brees and Brady are still playing. … That’s what adds years to a career. When we are creating or setting new goals (and tweaking things) here or there, maybe it’s uncomfortable in the beginning and your results aren’t going to be great, but if you’re patient with the process, you’re going to see improvement. I think that subtle improvement is one of the benchmarks.

Obviously, we have quantifiables for velocity, distance, accuracy. We’re charting a lot of this and we meet after to (break them down). … Taylor Kelly, when I’m out there with Jared, he’s watching every rep with me. When we are taking in what we’re seeing, we’re bouncing ideas. “Was it clean on your end? Is it clean on my end?” There’s always that, on every throw. We have to sign off on every throw before we move on. … When we sign off on 90 percent of a workout, we know we’re on the right path.

One big breakdown area is the idea of a player’s “talent carrying them.” Dedeaux said that a big part of training is understanding where the talent of an arm hides certain imperfections or small details that can ultimately hurt a quarterback in the long term, that maybe they could get away with early in their career.

How can you tell, as a coach, when a guy’s “talent is carrying them” through certain reps or certain throws?

We have a model of what we call “biomechanical imperatives” and “biomechanical inevitabilities.” When we say that his talent is carrying him, it’s that it’s not necessarily the best body position that he’s throwing from, or the velocity he’s generating isn’t contributed the correct way — ground-force, torque and all of that — but they just have arm talent. They’re able to make up for bad body position, or slow feet, or bad posture, with their arm. The result might be great, but we know through experience of watching and developing these guys that the arm takes a beating. They may not feel it at all in May, but over the course of a long offseason … you get into December and you’re inappropriately creating velocity and/or accuracy, your arm and connective tissue and certain joints take a beating. It gets a little harder to make that throw at the end of a season. You don’t get as lucky. You don’t feel quite as great.

But when you do things right consistently over the course of an entire offseason and in-season, you’ll see our guys’ arms thriving into the playoffs or Week 16, 17, 18, because they’ve done so much of “doing it right” and it’s not so much relying on talent. How can we tell? Part of that comes from understanding those biomechanical imperatives: This is what has to happen for you to be efficient. Your feet don’t have to be perfectly aligned, but your posture, your rotation and your kinematic sequencing has to be on-point. And here’s how you do that. Those types of things have to be there behind the throws.

from PFF https://www.pff.com/news/nfl-2020-team-preview-los-angeles-rams

Goff critics will point to last season as his regression back down to earth, but the reality is that he has played like a mid-tier quarterback whose production has been dependent on his ecosystem. The Rams’ scheme was fantastic in 2017 and 2018, as was the receiving talent, and Goff’s numbers reflected those truths. Last year, the scheme hit a lull and the offensive line was a disaster, leaving Goff with his worst performance since his rookie season in 2016. We’ve seen Goff make a high percentage of big-time throws while efficiently attacking the intermediate level, and he’s primed to bounce back as long as the offensive line returns to form and a third wide receiver emerges as a vertical threat.

Kevin O’Connell embracing opportunity to work with Jared Goff in Rams’ offense

GARY KLEIN

https://www.latimes.com/sports/rams/story/2020-08-16/kevin-oconnell-embracing-opportunity-lead-rams-offense-jared-goff

On the day coach Sean McVay introduced him as the Rams’ new offensive coordinator, Kevin O’Connell said he was drawn to the opportunity because of the role and the other coaches on the staff.

“The quarterback had a lot to do with it for me as well,” O’Connell said in February.

Six months later, O’Connell is finally getting the opportunity to work on the field with Jared Goff.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced NFL teams to conduct virtual offseason programs, so O’Connell attempted to build a relationship with Goff and other players through a computer screen.

Since the start of training camp two weeks ago, O’Connell has helped direct the offense during meetings and walk-throughs.

The Rams were off Sunday. They begin practice this week.

“It’s early on,” O’Connell said Saturday during a videoconference with reporters, “but I think it’s an exciting time for everybody as this thing kind of builds together.”

McVay is the play-caller and chief architect of the offense for a team that was without a titled offensive coordinator the last two seasons. O’Connell, 35, is expected to fill a role similar to the one Matt LaFleur provided during the 2017 season. LaFleur parlayed that opportunity into a play-calling role for the Tennessee Titans before he was hired as head coach of the Green Bay Packers.

Though untitled, O’Connell also is the quarterbacks coach.

Goff welcomes the addition of a coach who played quarterback at San Diego State and had stints as a player with several NFL teams. O’Connell has been a quarterbacks coach for the Cleveland Browns and the Washington Football Team and also was passing game coordinator and offensive coordinator for Washington.

“Just getting a feel of his demeanor, the way he talks, the way he communicates — he’s played the position,” Goff said at the outset of training camp. “He understands the little intricacies that go along with playing it, and I’m super excited.”

O’Connell and Goff are making up ground for the on-field time that was absent during the offseason. “Little things,” such as questions about a fundamental or certain pass coverages, have led to expanded conversations, O’Connell said.

O’Connell is assisting with an offense that will feature a different personality than the last two seasons. The Rams released star running back Todd Gurley and traded wide receiver Brandin Cooks. So young players such as rookie running back Cam Akers will be counted on to help fill the void.

The Rams open the season Sept. 13 against the Dallas Cowboys at SoFi Stadium on “Sunday Night Football.” After going through an acclimation phase of training camp the last two weeks, O’Connell is eager for practices to commence.

“We’ve had a lot of time to challenge these guys” in meetings and walk-throughs, he said. “Really testing their communication and kind of that controlled setting, testing their understanding, both veterans and new players, as far as what we’re going to ask them to do once things start to speed up.”