Goff: Dallas pre-season game to end of the pre-season

2016 Guide: What Ourlads’ NFL Scouting Services said about JARED GOFF:

California, 6040 215 4.79. Junior entry. Three-year starter from Kentfield, CA. First-team All Pac-12. Plays in the quarterback friendly pitch and catch spread “Air Raid” offense. A drop back passer from the shotgun who has good arm strength and knows his way around the pocket. Throws the ball on time and on target with good accuracy over his career. The lanky underclassman helped revitalize the Golden Bear program that had fallen on hard times by starting 37 straight games after hitting the field as a true freshman. The two-time team captain will look the rush pressure in the eye and make the clutch pass. Reacts well to pressure. Knows where he wants to go with the ball and throws the receiver open with good accuracy and timing. Keeps his eyes down the field. No pause in the pocket. Good pocket presence and feel. Reads progressions. Keeps his feet hot and throws before the receiver breaks open. Does a good job of changing ball speed and trajectory over the top of defenders. Good ball placement. The receiver doesn’t have to wait on the ball and is hit in stride to give him a chance to run after the catch. A quick snap wrist release with velocity. Steps, throws, and completes passes through small windows in tight areas. At his best when the protection is solid and he can step toward his target and throw. Majors in carving up a defense with short ball control passes from 6-10 yards. Spreads the ball around to multiple receivers who rotate into the huddle in a variety of sub packages. Can make the key throws rolling to his left. Will need to work on his 3-5 and 7-step drops to the throwing point from under center. Goff never played under center and the defense looks a whole lot different when dropping back and making your reads rather than seeing the field from a shotgun formation. The angular passer set 26 Cal records including career marks for passing yards (12,220), passing yards per game (329.7), and touchdown passes (96). He also set a pair of Pac-12 single season records in his final year at Cal when he passed for 4719 yards and 43 scores. An eventual starter with the talent to contribute early in his career. As an added bonus, Goff as a pooch punter is a major weapon. 2015 stats: 341/529, 4719 yds, 64.5%, 43 TD, 13 INT, 161.3 QB rating. Ball velocity 58 mph. OSR:16/18. First round. (A-32 3/4, H-9, SS-4.47, VJ-27).

zn wrote:

Here’s Goff after 2 pre-season games:

19 of 24 (79%), 194 yards, 8.08 YPA, 1 TD (4.167%), 0 INT (0%), 1 sck (4.167%), qb rating of 114.236

That;s not a real accomplishment but it does bode well.

Goff Sharp in Second 2017 Preseason Appearance

Myles Simmons

http://www.therams.com/news-and-events/article-1/Goff-Sharp-in-Second-2017-Preseason-Appearance/2e7010b3-a4b1-4e03-b494-de27dc752839

OAKLAND — Quarterback Jared Goff had an up-and-down start to the week in practice. But any issues looked far behind him on Saturday night, as the second-year signal-caller finished a sharp 16-of-20 passing for 160 yards and a touchdown.

Originally slated to play just over a quarter — or 20-25 snaps — Goff ended up with about 37, according to head coach Sean McVay, and played essentially the entire first half. In that time, Goff completed passes to seven different receivers, leading the offense to three scoring drives — including a pair of eight-play possessions that ended in touchdowns.

“I thought Jared did a great job making good decisions, got a lot of people involved,” McVay said postgame. “And I thought just from having eight snaps in Week 1 and then coming in tonight and having 37 — we always talk about that daily improvement and he definitely got better this week.”

“I felt good,” Goff said. “I think we started the way we wanted to start. I think we were aggressive offensively.”

Part of what made Goff so effective was the way the offense was able to avoid negative plays. The Rams faced only three third downs of longer than five yards when Goff was in the game, which is why the club ended the first two quarters six-of-eight in third-down efficiency.

“It’s huge — huge for any offense, especially for us when we’re able to stay in front of the sticks, stay in 3rd-and-manageable,” Goff said. “It’s a game changer. You don’t like to be in 3rd-and-12. You don’t want to be in even 2nd-and-12, you want to stay ahead of the sticks. And I think we did a good job of that tonight. And ultimately, that’ll help us move the ball and score points.”

The time of possession numbers also illustrate how the Rams were able to get in a rhythm in the first half. L.A. doubled up Oakland, maintaining possession for 20:01 to the Raiders’ 9:59.

“I think we have to get a few plays to get us into a rhythm,” Goff said. “But once we do, once we move the ball, you get a couple first downs, you start getting that little feel, you start getting into a rhythm. And I think you can definitely feel it — certainly toward the end of that second drive, we felt like we had a pretty good tempo going. And we were able to move the ball on almost every down.”

Goff was sacked once — when 2016 Defensive Player of the Year Khalil Mack split a double team to make his way into the backfield — but was kept upright for the rest of the first half, as no other Raider had a quarterback hit. The quarterback showed solid pocket awareness, stepping up when he needed to. But the five men up front did well, too.

“I thought the O-line did a great job of creating that pocket, especially with guys like Bruce Irvin and Khalil Mack on the edge there,” Goff said. “Running them up behind me and giving me a pocket to sit in was really, really good tonight.”

And so though Goff had a rocky start to the week, McVay seemed pleased with how the quarterback kept working and was able to effectively command the offense on Saturday.

“My experience with Jared to this point has shown me that he’s nothing but a mentally tough guy that has great resilience and the ability to respond when things don’t work out,” McVay said. “And I think he’s able to take it for what it is and learn from it, and try to avoid those moving forward. But I think it’s also our job as coaches to try to put him in situations that are conducive for making good decisions consistently.”

“I thought he did an excellent job getting in and out of the huddle, managing it,” McVay added. “It was a good atmosphere tonight, where you’re having to use your silent cadence and do some different things. So there were some different elements that — very pleased with the way with he led the offense. And we were able to come away with some points and that’s always the goal.”

Rams QB coach likes Goff’s growth, but ‘he’s far from a finished product’

Alden Gonzalez

http://www.espn.com/blog/los-angeles-rams/post/_/id/34972/rams-qb-coach-likes-goffs-growth-but-hes-far-from-a-finished-product

THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. — There was never really one specific thing that Jared Goff needed to improve on as he entered 2017. He was — and still is — only 22 years old, a second-year quarterback in his first year under a new system, coming off a rookie season that was substandard by every measure. Greg Olson, the Los Angeles Rams’ new quarterbacks coach, couldn’t specify.

“We felt, as a staff, when we put all our eyes on him, that there were a number of things that he could get better at,” Olson said. “From footwork to progressions to timing in the passing game, there were a lot of things there that we felt like he needed to work on.”

The list remains daunting, even in the midst of his most encouraging performance to date.

Goff went 16-of-20 for 160 yards while playing almost the entire first half against the Oakland Raiders on Saturday night. He led the Rams to two touchdowns and a field goal in four drives, the first of which ended with a 23-yard touchdown pass to a wide-open Cooper Kupp. It was the type of stretch that made one believe that the former No. 1 overall pick may actually thrive one day; that this offense, rebuilt over the last five months, may finally be good again.

Goff acknowledged the confidence boost a night like that can trigger, “But it wasn’t like it was shocking,” he added. “It’s something that we expected to do.”

Olson’s excitement was tempered.

“Believe me,” Olson said of Goff, “he’s far from a finished product. He would tell you that. And we know that; we understand that. But we’re happy with the growth so far and the way he’s approached the process here of getting better. There’s a lot of positive things here that have come out, and he’s just gotta continue that constant, daily improvement.”

Olson was the Rams’ offensive coordinator from 2006 to 2007, when the team operated out of St. Louis. He worked with an in-his-prime Marc Bulger then, one of numerous quarterbacks who have been under his tutelage. Prior to rejoining the Rams, Olson spent 15 years as either a quarterbacks coach or an offensive coordinator — sometimes both — with seven different organizations. He instructed veterans like Jeff Garcia, Kordell Stewart and Brian Griese, young players like Rex Grossman, Blaine Gabbert and Blake Bortles.

In Goff, Olson sees someone who “wants to get better” and “wants to realize his potential.” He sees someone who has “tried to wipe the slate clean from his rookie season,” but also “took it as a learning experience.” He sees someone with a “good attitude” and a “strong work ethic.” And he sees someone who has had to learn two different systems in his first two NFL seasons, all while getting acclimated to the speed of professional football.

“That’s not an easy task,” Olson said. “But he’s never complained or placed blame on anybody or any of his circumstances. I really appreciate that about him.”

Goff threw only four incomplete passes in his second preseason game, but Olson felt he could’ve easily gone 19-of-20. Olson was impressed by the way Goff kept his eyes down the field and didn’t feel the rush. And he loved how calm he was on that first touchdown pass, when he rolled to his right and got rid of the football just before former Defensive Player of the Year Khalil Mack could get to him.

In the days leading up to that, though, Goff struggled, throwing six interceptions over a three-day stretch during practice. Some of that was a byproduct of testing his limits, because, as Olson said, “You have to find out about what throws you can and can’t make.”

The next threshold for Goff — the toughest threshold for Goff — is to make performances like Saturday his norm.

“Consistency over time is what it’s all about,” Olson said. “As you’re getting better, those lows need to become lower. There might be some little dips along the way, but it’s just gotta be constant, never-ending improvement. We understand that he’s a young player, and there’s going to be mistakes along the way. But they can’t affect the growth process.”

Goff wasn’t named the starting quarterback until Week 11 last season. He ultimately lost all seven of his starts and finished with a 22.2 Total QBR, the NFL’s lowest. The offensive line was a disaster, the receiving corps was inferior, the running game was non-existent, and the coaching staff was underqualified. But Goff himself wasn’t good. Outside of one impressive half in New Orleans, he struggled thoroughly. And when 50 league insiders were recently asked to rank quarterbacks, Goff placed 32nd out of 36, with one former general manager saying, “Man, he did not look the part when he played last year.”

Olson sees urgency out of Goff this year. He can also see why it might not have been there last summer, because Case Keenum was there and the Rams, under Jeff Fisher, basically let Goff know he wasn’t coming in as their starting quarterback. Sean McVay took the opposite approach in one of his first meetings with Goff. He told him that it was his job. That he would take all the first-team snaps, that he needed to establish himself as a leader, that he was expected to learn the offense quickly, and shoulder all that is required of an NFL quarterback.

Goff has accepted the challenge, and if Saturday was any indication, he has shown remarkable growth.

“But it’s just a start,” Olson said, “and we’re a long ways away from getting into the season. We’ll know more when this season ends; when he finishes his second year.”

Goff, Wentz, Dak: What each worked on to thrive in Year 2

Dan Graziano

http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/20442861/jared-goff-carson-wentz-dak-prescott-year-2-nfl-quarterback-worked-thrive

ILADELPHIA — They don’t throw you a parade for having a strong rookie season as an NFL quarterback; they give you more work.

Carson Wentz returned from an offseason in California with a trimmed down delivery and a variety of other mechanical tweaks, and his Philadelphia Eagles coaches knew what they needed to do. Last season was fun and established Wentz as the quarterback around whom the Eagles believe they can build their team. But this season is about the next steps in that construction project.

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And that means drudgery. It means pulling one play out of the playbook and running it against five, six, seven different coverages, then pulling another play out of the playbook and doing the same thing. Good play, kid, but that was against Cover 1. Let’s see it against Cover 2. Cover 4. Zero Blitz. 1 Blitz. Over and over and over and over. OK, next play. Same thing.

“By no means have we got it figured out yet,” Eagles coach Doug Pederson said after a training camp practice earlier this month. “Last year, it was about just kind of getting his feet wet, understanding our offense, the terminology, kind of getting used to each other. And now, all that’s kind of behind us and it’s about, ‘Let’s peel the onion back one more time.’ Let’s talk about situations. Let’s talk about third-and-1s and third-and-7s and -9s and first and second down, red zone situations. Let’s dive into that now and hone in and see those incremental increases that you see from young quarterbacks, and just keep kind of drilling down in those areas. That’s the biggest thing going into Year 2.”

It’s Year 2 for Wentz in Philly, and for Dak Prescott in Dallas and Jared Goff in Los Angeles. Three second-year starting quarterbacks with three very different stories so far. The common thread is that each of their stories is just beginning. And whether their 2016 season was as inconclusive as Goff’s or as brilliantly successful as Prescott’s, these are all still young players with a lot of work to do before we know how their careers will turn out.

“We’re still learning and we’re still growing and he’s still developing and still working on a lot of things,” Pederson said of Wentz. “But I think that’s now where it takes time. I grew up in the true West Coast system with [Mike] Holmgren and Coach [Andy] Reid, and it’s a three-, four-year process. Brett Favre was constantly learning, every year, even the older he got. I have a phrase: Don’t get bored with completions. It makes us better. So that’s what we’re working on. That’s what we’re trying to get to — to where it all becomes second nature for all of us, really.”

So let’s start there, in Philadelphia, and take a deeper look at three very different second-year quarterback situations and what each tried to do this offseason to improve:

Carson Wentz, Philadelphia Eagles

Pick in 2016 draft: No. 2

A year ago at this time, Wentz was the No. 3 quarterback on the Eagles’ depth chart behind Sam Bradford and Chase Daniel. The team had moved up to No. 2 overall in the draft to select him, but it wanted to be patient while it had better options, and Bradford the veteran was supposed to be the starter. That all changed when Minnesota’s Teddy Bridgewater tore up his knee and a Vikings team with Super Bowl aspirations offered a first-round pick for Bradford. The Eagles tore up their quarterback plan, looked at the progress Wentz had made through the summer, and decided to roll with the rookie.

“Yeah, it was definitely tough in OTAs and in training camp,” Wentz recalled. “I was walking a fine line a lot, you know, when I was with the [third team] — kind of had to know when to make my comments and different things. So that was definitely hard, I’m not going to lie. But then, once I was the starter, there was no looking back. And I think, in that time, even though maybe I wasn’t asserting myself as a leader vocally as much, you can still go out and work your tail off, show everybody how you care about people and just how you approach the game. I think that builds a lot of respect among your teammates.”

That valuable behind-the-scenes groundwork laid, Wentz started the on-field portion of his career ablaze. He completed 64.7 percent of his passes with five touchdowns and no interceptions while the Eagles outscored opponents 92-27 en route to a 3-0 start. Wentz was the talk of the league before Prescott was.

It got messier from there, of course. There were predictably miserable days against teams like the Giants and Seahawks interspersed with more encouraging moments such as a victory over the Falcons. Wentz ended up 25th in passer rating, 26th in Total QBR and 29th in yards per attempt with 16 touchdown passes against 14 interceptions. Work to do, for sure, and he went out to California to drill specifics.

“A lot of it was footwork — proper footwork, proper weight distribution, which leads to better efficiency with just throwing motion and everything,” Wentz said. “So I worked on those things — no mass overhauls by any means, but I definitely feel more efficient with my throwing.”

Dak Prescott, Dallas Cowboys

Pick in 2016 draft: No. 135

If you’re going to build on your promise, the first step is realizing that you have to. The Eagles’ 2016 record and the downturn his own performance took after the hot September start were enough to prove to Wentz and his coaches that not everything got figured out in one rookie season. Out in Frisco, Texas, however, the story is a little bit different.

You needed eclipse glasses to watch Prescott and the Dallas Cowboys in 2016. With the help of fellow stud rookie Ezekiel Elliott and a star-studded offensive line in front of him, Prescott delivered a rookie season for the ages. He was third in the NFL in Total QBR behind Matt Ryan and Tom Brady, fourth in yards per attempt, fourth in completion percentage, and threw 23 touchdown passes against only four interceptions. The Cowboys went 13-3 before getting caught under the Aaron Rodgers steamroller in the playoffs, and Prescott was named NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year.

So what do you do to sow improvement in a player who had so much success? You focus on the failures.

“You look at how people might study you,” Cowboys offensive coordinator Scott Linehan said in a phone interview Tuesday. “We sit him down and we show him, ‘This is something someone might try on you, because someone else had success with it.’ The Giants, for example. They’re going to look at some of the stuff they did and feel good about it, especially the second game we played them.”

Which is why Linehan has made Prescott study that second Giants game — a 10-7 loss in New Jersey on Dec. 11 that was easily Prescott’s worst game of the season. He was 17-of-37 passing for 165 yards with one touchdown and two interceptions. (Remember, he threw only two other interceptions in the entire regular season.) Prescott’s QBR for that game was 14.8. His next lowest single-game QBR was 50.6, and that came in a meaningless season finale in which he played only two series.

So Prescott has had to watch that second Giants game over and over, and while doing so he has been asked to imagine the way opposing defensive coordinators are watching it, looking for clues about how to attack him. When training camp opened last year, Prescott was a fourth-round pick sitting behind Tony Romo and Kellen Moore on the Cowboys’ depth chart. It wasn’t until Aug. 25 of last year that Romo hurt his back in a preseason game against the Seahawks and Prescott took over.

He’s not sneaking up on anyone this time.

“We feel like everything was kind of day-to-day last year, the way it all unfolded,” Linehan said. “So it’s a little bit of, ‘OK, take a breath, step back and look at what you were doing this time last year.’ Last year, Dak was the No. 3 quarterback until the third preseason game. Now, you’ve got to carry your team as a starter.”

So it goes beyond just that Giants game. Anyone who had any kind of success against Prescott in any situation gets studied. Anyone who stopped him on a given drive with something he might see again. He played Washington twice, and now a few of that team’s coaches (including last season’s defensive coordinator) are with the Rams. The Cowboys play the Rams on Oct. 1. In advance of that game, they’ll watch tape to see what Washington tried to do against Prescott last season. Mix that level of study with the work he was already doing to make sure Year 1 wasn’t a fluke.

“Mechanics, he’s certainly worked on those. That’s one of the best things he’s done,” Linehan said. “Footwork, timing, all of those things — he’s head-and-shoulders above where he was when he got into the league.”

For Prescott, it’s about knowing how they’re going to come after you.

Jared Goff, Los Angeles Rams

Pick in 2016 draft: No. 1

Prescott was the 135th pick in the 2016 draft. Goff was the first. Their rookie seasons couldn’t have been much more different. Prescott started from Week 1, never looked back and won awards. Goff had to wait until Week 11 to wrest the Rams’ starting quarterback job from Case Keenum. He played in seven games, lost them all, and posted a 22.2 Total QBR that ranked just behind that of Arizona backup Drew Stanton and just ahead of Cleveland wide receiver Terrelle Pryor.

Goff’s best game from a QBR standpoint was his first, and his next best was his second game. Of his five touchdown passes for the season, three came in one game against a Saints defense that allowed more points than any other team in the league outside of San Francisco. Yes, one of the other two touchdown passes came against San Francisco.

Four games into Goff’s tenure as starter, the Rams fired coach Jeff Fisher. After the season ended, they also let go of offensive coordinator Rob Boras, passing game coordinator Mike Groh and quarterbacks coach Chris Weinke.

To replace Fisher, the Rams hired 31-year-old former Washington offensive coordinator Sean McVay, who helped make Kirk Cousins a star in his last stop but has no connection to Goff. McVay and his staff had nothing to do with drafting Goff. Washington wasn’t evaluating quarterbacks before the 2016 draft, and neither were the Atlanta Falcons, for whom new Rams offensive coordinator Matt LaFleur was working at the time.

So yeah, if you want to say Goff is starting from scratch in Year 2, no one’s going to tell you you’re nuts.

“I don’t ever want to say starting from scratch, because he obviously learned a lot from that last staff,” LaFleur said. “But yeah, anytime a quarterback has to learn a new system, new terminology, how you’re asked to execute fundamentals, there is a learning curve there.”

The key with Goff, the Rams believe, is the strength of the group around him. Adding veteran offensive linemen Andrew Whitworth and John Sullivan, drafting wide receiver Cooper Kupp, signing free-agent wideout Robert Woods and, most recently, trading for wideout Sammy Watkins should help put Goff in a position to maximize what he can do well at this point in his career and minimize the areas where he struggles. The Rams are likely to lean heavily on a run game that features 2015 first-round pick Todd Gurley, but that assumes he and the linemen have picked up the zone blocking scheme McVay & Co. brought with them and installed this summer.

“I don’t want to say you treat him like a rookie, but I think anytime you’re in the first year of a system, especially with a younger player, you almost have to,” LaFleur said. “It sounds terrible, but that’s what it is — just knowing you’re in the developmental phase of a young player’s career.”

In the meantime, though, the Rams will be trying to win games. Goff has abilities they believe can help them do that. LaFleur called him a “natural thrower with pretty good accuracy,” and the team has been happy with some of the decision-making they’ve seen from Goff so far in this year’s preseason game action, including a 16-for-20 passing performance against Oakland in Week 2. But fundamentally, Goff is entering Year 2 without the benefit of the same kind of Year 1 those other two guys had. And as a result, expectations have to be more modest.

“I think he’s definitely improving,” LaFleur said. “He’s got a much better understanding of what we’re trying to accomplish and what the expectations are for him. He’s just got a much better understanding of football.”

That’s a good place to start. And when you look at these three second-year quarterbacks, the one who was drafted the earliest is the one who’s still the least removed from the starting line.

The 32 starting QBs for 2017 listed by age … By Thanksgiving, 15 of the 32 guys on this list will be 30 or older. pic.twitter.com/aKxUcwFaqJ

— Albert Breer (@AlbertBreer) August 28, 2017

-X- wrote:

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.@SI_PeterKing​ uses #NFLGamePass to put Jared Goff under a microscope pic.twitter.com/Yxs7iCmYa3

— Sports Illustrated (@SInow) August 24, 2017

That’s an elite throw in the face of pressure.

I know this is *only* one example, but it’s a pretty good example of him progressing through his reads. He goes X, Z, Y, TE (go), and back to Y before he throws. That’s 4 progressions.

He’s of course going to make some mistakes along the way, but that shouldn’t be the focus. It should be on how he’s maturing as a quarterback over the course of a season. Not game by game. And certainly not the past.