Keenum will be the starter to open camp…how close or far is Goff?

NFC West Q&A: Does Jared Goff make the Rams a title contender?

Nick Wagoner

http://espn.go.com/blog/st-louis-rams/post/_/id/29807/nfc-west-qa-does-jared-goff-make-the-rams-a-title-contender

Today’s question: The Los Angeles Rams believed they were a quarterback away from turning the corner and becoming a contender. Now that they have Jared Goff, does the rest of the NFC West agree?

Josh Weinfuss, Arizona Cardinals reporter: Yes, but with a caveat. Goff will need two or three seasons to be the type of quarterback who can take the Rams to the next level. As long as the team keeps its defense together, Los Angeles can have a contender by 2018. The Rams have a defensive nucleus — with Aaron Donald, Robert Quinn and Alec Ogletree — that complements Goff. Even with Quinn and Ogletree coming off injury, the Rams allowed the third-fewest touchdowns in the NFL, while forcing 20 fumbles and recovering 11 — both the sixth most in the NFL. And that stout defense recorded 41 sacks last season — the most in the NFC West. Six of their nine losses were by two touchdowns or less, and of those six, four were by less than a touchdown. Goff can be the difference there. So, Goff has the defensive infrastructure to win. And on offense, he has a ton of young talent led by Todd Gurley. Complementing Gurley will be running back Tre Mason, wide receiver Tavon Austin and tight end Jared Cook. The talent is there, and Gurley can take some of the pressure off Goff, but the Rams need a captain to guide their ship.

Paul Gutierrez, San Francisco 49ers reporter: On the bright side for the 49ers, at least the NorCal-SoCal rivalry is born again with the Rams being rechristened as the Los Angeles Rams. But unless that new quarterback is a reincarnation of Vince Ferragamo, the only QB to take the L.A. Rams to a Super Bowl, how does this change things for them? Granted, the strength of the Rams is their defense in general, Aaron Donald in particular. So they don’t necessarily need Goff to be Kurt Warner, the only QB to win a Super Bowl for the franchise (in St. Louis). Keep in mind, Jeff Fisher is still the coach and the next time he guides the Rams to a winning record will be the first. In fact, he has had only two seasons where his team has won more than eight games since 2004, and that was in Tennessee. Indeed, Fisher is 3-4-1 with the Rams against the 49ers. Yes, Goff was the No. 1 overall draft pick for a reason, and there will be some serendipity going on with his first official NFL pass completion in the Niners’ home; Goff’s father, Jerry, got his first MLB hit for the Montreal Expos in the Niners’ previous home, Candlestick Park, in 1990. Goff the younger should be the least of the rebuilding Niners’ problems in 2016.

Sheil Kapadia, Seattle Seahawks reporter: The Rams ranked 29th in offensive efficiency last season. Finding a quarterback is a step in the right direction, but that assumes they will successfully develop Goff into a quality starter. And even if that happens, it’s likely to take two or three years. There may be no bigger “prove it” coach in the NFL than Jeff Fisher. He’s now gone six straight seasons without producing a team with a winning record, which is quite a remarkable feat. In his last 11 seasons as a coach, Fisher’s teams have finished above .500 just twice. In the Rams’ perfect world, Goff develops, Todd Gurley reaches his ceiling and they continue to build on a talented defense. But contender status still seems like it’s at least a couple years away — even if everything goes right.

One of the guys says Goff is struggling? I haven’t heard that

He had a bad day with the ones in OTAs, with reporters watching.

Here’s the thing though.

The Rams defensive 1s throw a lot of stuff at the offense even as early as OTAs. The Rams theory is, it’s better to expose him to that kind of pro defensive sophistication early. For onlookers though, they might have seen Goff struggling, not the defensive 1s messing with a rookie.

The team talked about this stuff (from this thread):

from Fisher on how, when Jared Goff can earn Rams’ starting QB job

Eric Edholm

…

It might be common practice this time of year to play vanilla coverages and fronts in OTA sessions because NFL teams are allotted so few of them. But the Rams are taking the opposite approach: It works twofold because this is a talented, experienced defense that can handle a lot and that the multiple looks the Rams are throwing at Goff are serving to speed up his education before he gets to camp.

“We are what we call a hybrid defense, I’d say,” Fisher said. “We used a lot of different fronts — over, under, odd, even — with our groupings, and [Goff] is seeing a lot of that now so far. He’s done a great job to this point thus far of seeing these looks, dissecting them quickly and making decisions.”

Have the Rams tricked him a few times?

Rams start with Keenum, but sell tickets with Goff

Jeff Gordon

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/columns/jeff-gordon/tipsheet-rams-start-with-keenum-but-sell-tickets-with-goff/article_e5ecf0c8-d943-561c-8ffc-c151b85b5073.html

Naming Case Keenum the starting quarterback heading into training camp was not marketing gold for the Rams.

If that, that sounds more like something a franchise does when it is trying to kill the gate to expedite the process of moving to a more lucrative market. But that was last year’s plan.

This year the Rams are trying to win back Los Angeles.

“The fans will get more into it as time goes on and the season goes on,” former Rams star Eric Dickerson told Yahoo! Sports. “The Rams have been gone for so long and you know, it takes time for the fans to warm up. They haven’t seen this team in 22 years.”

The key, Dickerson said, will be to assemble a talent base fans will rally around. Rookie quarterback Jared Goff must become a key piece of the sales pitch.

“People come out to see players,” Dickerson said. “It’s all about, ‘I wanna see Jared Goff’ or ‘I wanna see Aaron Donald or ‘I wanna see Todd Gurley.’ They come out to see their players. So, if players are exciting, the fans will come out.”

We know Gurley and Donald can play, but Goff will be a work in progress — which is why coach Jeff Fisher was wise to put more of the pressure on the pint-sized Keenum early on.

Goff has good tools, but he faces a tough adjustment on a team with god-awful passing targets.

“He reminds me a little bit of Aaron Rogers with his accuracy,” Dickerson said. “I would tell him just to study. Become a student of the game. As a quarterback, you’ve got to become a student of the game because those defenses move so much and there’s so much happening on that field. He has the ability. I think if he becomes a student of the game, he’ll do very well.”

SI.com’s Chris Burke had this take on the Keenum/Goff scenario:

Give the Rams this much: They’re really sticking to the whole Case Keenum thing. Keenum won three games in December last season, over Detroit, Tampa Bay and Seattle, and since then both Fisher and GM Les Snead have insisted that he is their No. 1 quarterback. Until he’s not, of course.

The inevitable will happen, with Goff leapfrogging Keenum to take over the offense. When it happens remains a mystery, but this is mostly just coachspeak for the time being. Relatively smart coachspeak, as it were—as Fisher noted within the same press conference, the worst thing Los Angeles can do is drop Goff into a bad spot when he’s not ready.

There will be pressure to play him immediately, given his status as the No. 1 pick and the team’s relocation, but patience is an underappreciated virtue when it comes to rookie QBs. This boils down to how quick a study Goff is, because there is almost no chance that Keenum straight-up outplays him in the preseason. Keenum likely can maintain his starting assignment only by Goff showing that he’s not ready for it.

We’ll give Keenum two games, maybe three as a starter. We’re not talking about Kurt Warner playing ahead of Eli Manning here. We’re talking about Case Keenum.