Looks like this game will have 2 subs at OT, which considering it’s Detroit (tough DL) and on the road, does not look promising at first glance.

Where is Greg Robinson when you need him.

Oh wait yeah that’s right, he was put on 5 years probation in 2020 for possessing 150 pounds of weed while crossing an American border checkpoint coming from Mexico, and then arrested again in 2022 in Louisiana with $120 thousand in illegal drugs in his possession.

So he’s probably not available either.

HoldenCantor@HoldenCantor
The Rams offensive line Week 1 vs Detroit will probably be:

LT Joe Noteboom
LG Jonah Jackson
C Steve Avila
RG Kevin Dotson
RT Warren McClendon

Still hoping Havenstein can return

Lions Are ‘Damn Good’ Thanks to Jared Goff’s Revival In Detroit
But even if Detroit should win the Super Bowl, the former Rams quarterback will still be questioned, debated, doubted and the rest.

Greg Bishop

https://www.si.com/nfl/lions-are-damn-good-thanks-to-jared-goff-detroit-revival

When the Detroit Lions traded Matthew Stafford in 2021, the quarterback they received in return (along with draft picks) seemed like an afterthought in a wider deal. To many, maybe. But not to him.

Jared Goff saw a team that wanted him, a general manager he was already familiar with and a coach among the easiest in sports to line up alongside for an Anchorman-style brawl.

Both his new franchise and the city it called home had fallen into disrepair. Both had also, generally, been mischaracterized, with depictions that were too general, overly harsh and lacking context. A franchise and a city that were similar to … him.

Goff, per an interview this summer and a conversation with his private quarterbacks coach, Adam Dedeaux, began his own Detroit rebirth by simplifying his approach. In later seasons with the Los Angeles Rams, the team that drafted him with the No. 1 pick in 2016, Goff’s growth had created unintended consequences. He sometimes felt pressure and made throws he shouldn’t have when anxiety began to amplify.

So the idea that first season in Detroit: Go back to the stuff Goff always did well on football fields, in order to build toward more creative play. Goff didn’t expect this back-to-school development, nor the trade, nor Detroit, nor three wins over the course of an entire season, his first in the Motor City. But he embraced it because he always embraces everything. He could see this experiment in building football culture beginning to take shape.

That coach, Dan Campbell, had hired Ben Johnson to coach tight ends through that initial 2021 season. Halfway through it, though, he promoted Johnson to offensive coordinator. Johnson and Goff clicked, right away.

In 2022, his second season in Detroit and first full year with Johnson as his OC, Goff made the Pro Bowl. His interception tally remained in single digits. His completion percentage perpetually hovered in the mid-60s, far above all but his final season with the Rams. A simpler, smarter game had yielded more than the intended results. Now, Goff was adding mastery—of the system and how he played within it, or, if we must, managed games (and, to be clear, quite well)—while eyeing ways both could be enhanced.

“The first year I worked with him, I said he was going to win Super Bowls,” says Adam Dedeaux, Goff’s QB coach and mentor to many a star quarterback. “The moment’s never too big. He ran into a buzzsaw in Bill Belichick [and the Patriots, who beat the Rams 13–3 in Super Bowl LIII]. But it wasn’t that the moment was too big.”

Before last season, Goff and Dedeaux began to shift their focus. Goff had the Lions’ offense down. He understood his role, his teammates’ roles and how each could be optimized. He completed a career-high 67.3% of his attempts, threw for 4,575 yards, tossed 30 touchdowns compared to 12 interceptions, and led the Lions—Detroit!—back to the playoffs, winning two games there. But those parts, each awesome, aren’t what stick with him.

The conference championship game loss at San Francisco still stung back in June. It seemed fair to wonder if Goff had perspective despite the Lions’ second-half collapse, if he and Campbell shared a moment that evening to recognize how far they’d come, together. Goff might as well have been told that Eminem doesn’t rank among history’s best rap artists. His face said what his mouth made far more diplomatic. Face said: worst question in the history of the world. Mouth said: “No, because we didn’t win.”

Come on! What a season Goff and the Lions put together. The end of so many narratives. The start of so many more. Pressed for why he couldn’t find those notions in the moment, his thinking becomes clearer. It starts with a simple fact. They didn’t win. Right, he’s told, but while every team in football says their goal in every season is to win the Super Bowl, there are maybe six or eight teams in any one season that can say that with a straight face and a realistic chance. “Yeah, and we were certainly one of them,” he says, with a light scoff that perhaps was more of a throat-clearing for what came next.

“Last year, what bothered me, at times, was people had this notion that we were happy to be there, and we certainly weren’t [that],” he says. “The Cinderella-story-type things. And it’s like, No, we’re just damn good.”

Asked to confirm or add to Goff’s sentiments, Campbell’s eyes all but twinkle from inside that break-glass-in-case look of his. “I love it, I absolutely love it, and he’s absolutely right,” the coach gushes. “Yeah, there is no moment, man. You’re dejected. And you’re off. And it hurts.”

One week or so after the Super Bowl ended in another Kansas City Chiefs title, Goff was back at individual practices, even earlier than usual. Months later, Detroit signed him to a massive extension—four years, potentially worth over $200 million, $170 million of that guaranteed. Goff knows that he must earn it, just not in the way most might think is obvious. He wants to earn another playoff run, another Super Bowl appearance and, this time, a championship.

Anyone who didn’t know that—and, to be clear, all probably did—was reminded of the work ahead early into Detroit’s voluntary OTAs this spring. After one terrible offensive practice, Campbell gathered the offense and made clear what already should have been the clearest thing in the world: His standards hadn’t dropped. They never would. The offense would, at minimum, need to rise and meet that baseline. Immediately. “Guys, great offenses in this league don’t do that,” Campbell boomed.

Detroit’s did rise, did meet their coach’s exacting standard, the very next practice. Which is both a small thing and not a small thing at all. Not when the Super Bowl is the only goal.

How often does Goff think about that? Every day, he says.

Goff only intensified preparations for next season. Now better in all areas of technique, with three more seasons of experience, higher accuracy and far fewer too-risky throws, he long ago realized how fortunate he was. Fortunate, yes, to be traded to the Lions. “The opportunity I had, yeah, and how lucky I was to get a chance to be in a place that hasn’t won, has been downtrodden, beaten down, told it’s not good enough,” he says.

To win a Super Bowl, now, in this place, after everything, would present the ultimate case for patience in pro football. “There’ll be no better, sweet feeling,” he says, adding the obligatory disclaimer. “But no one expects it to be easy.”

Goff, Dedeaux argues, already boasts an objective résumé that far outpaces his acclaim outside team headquarters. He has won shootouts against the “best” quarterbacks of his era. He has won playoff games—and, now, won them in Detroit. He’s still not, according to Dedeaux or a basic internet search, regarded as a candidate for a mythical status that would have been laughed away three years ago. Still not seen, by most, as a top-five NFL quarterback.

Other than taking more calculated, still risky chances, the bulk of their time together this offseason focused on fine-tuning everything they’ve built. It would, Goff says, be too boring and too granular to explain. Like a doctoral degree in quarterback play, he says. More efficiency overall. Smaller technical corrections. Introducing new, subtle tactics to maneuver defenders, rather than react to them. Considering details that were considered too finite in previous offseasons. Then making some throws he decided not to attempt in recent seasons; only now, stepping into each with renewed confidence and trust in his own ability.

That Johnson, his coordinator, didn’t leave to become a head coach elsewhere—another obligatory disclaimer: yet—helps tremendously. A second, consistent receiver option beyond star wideout Amon-Ra St. Brown, would help. But Dedeaux believes—he’s not alone—that Goff can carry the Lions through stretches of games and the overall season.

Sometimes, they have “candid conversations” about the quarterback market and how it’s changing, ballooning, based on potential and protecting assets as much as what happens on the field. Goff was once the potential guy. Now, he’s a fiercely debated piece in that up-up-up landscape for quarterback compensation. Neither Goff nor any of his coaches begrudge any quarterbacks who perpetually present immense talent, endless potential, and occasionally, when everything and everyone around them aligns, fashion a special season. Goff is not those players, and that’s a good thing, the evidence clear through no more than a quick glance at his statistics, advanced metrics or otherwise.

“I get where some people are super flashy, and Jared has not been flashy,” Dedeaux says. “He’s been solid. He’s been dependable, repeatable. He executes. He stays healthy. He’s present. It matters to him, to be in the building. He shows up. Does the little things. Easy to coach. And only getting better.”

Is Goff—cue the laugh track no longer—a top-five candidate, worthy of more widespread consideration for his talents? Dedeaux answers with a question of his own: Is he going to be as flashy as a Patrick Mahomes or a Josh Allen or a Lamar Jackson? Well, no. “But the accumulation of what he does certainly warrants” his standing near there, if not there-there.

So he plans to, yet again. Goff insists that optics don’t matter, not to him, this QB with the laid-back personality of a La-Z-Boy. Dedeaux will not say they’re irrelevant. In some, significant ways, they do matter. What he wants is for Goff to be considered more fairly, for his optics to come from what he has already accomplished. How he changed his voice and everyday routines to maximize his impact, to be heard; then, rebuilt his style of play; before starting on false narratives by not addressing them, directly, at all.

Should Detroit win the upcoming Super Bowl, a potential NFL dynasty, starting like the Patriots did in a championship victory carved inside the Superdome in New Orleans, Goff will still be questioned, debated, doubted and the rest. Probably less than before. But totally celebrated? No. “I still don’t know if he’d ever get the credit he deserves,” Dedeaux says.

Brian Baldinger@BaldyNFL
@Lions v @RamsNFL wildcard weekend. The Detroit #OnePride defense played great Red Zone defense to force FG’s to escape with a 24-23 WIN. What will be the difference in @SNFonNBC

@speed_kills@speedk1lls
yup that was the difference. The Rams punted what once or twice the entire game. It was their inability to score in the red zone two of those were inside the 10. I personally would have liked to see them stick with Kyren down there. Let’s see if they can change up next Sunday!!

48: Jared Goff (QB, Lions) | Top 100 Players of 2024

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They started off slow last year too. Part of that was K Wms being out 4 games but he was not out in the opening 3 games. The first 3 games include a win at Seattle, but then 2 losses to SF and the Bengals. They ended up going 3-6 before the bye, but regrouped at the bye to go 6-1 in the 7 games where the starters played (they didn’t play the starters in the final game).

Now they’re on the road against a tough opponent and here’s what they’re missing:

CB: Wms is out we don’t know yet if Durant can play. Update via edit: Durant is playing.

ILB: They’re replacing Jones, probably with Reeder

One thing is that the CB/ILB situation could be lessened if the Rams rely heavily on their safety rotation. They are deep and talented at safety.

OL: Jackson is out, Hav might be out,  and they’re shifting things around at center.

If the relplacement OL can hold up, they could be the offense we knew from the 2nd half of last year. But if anything, deeper at WR and RB. It’s hard to say what replacing the OTs and then also experimenting at center will do to their cohesiveness, but they absolutely do have the firepower. Plus I hear that that Mort Stafford guy is a good qb.

If the young front 7 players on the DL and at edge can rise up in game 1, and like I said if they fill in the gaps by deploying multiple safeties, they could surprise us on D.

If not, it could be another situation like last year where maybe they’re not firing on all cylinders at first until they get a few guys back and then re-group at the bye—and re-grouping at the bye is something this team is good at doing. This year the bye comes earlier btw

Then they will smoke the league like a processed meat product being abruptly heated in some fashion.

…

Los Angeles Rams@RamsNFL
“Wherever they need me, I’m ready.” Jonah Jackson set to start at center against the Lions.