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Sorta like women’s healthcare would change if men could also have babies…
So far this summer, more than 1,000 people across South Asia have died as a result of flooding from the monsoons. We are likely to see many more incidents like this building collapse, as well as more people drowning in floods due to the effects of global warming.
This is from a longer article about several players. It includes vids of Goff and comments on those vids, but you need to be a subscriber to access the vids. So, uh…pretend.
It’s still a good read IMO. —
Matt Waldman, Sept 4 2017
CAN JARED GOFF MAKE THE CUT?
Most football analysts I know have written him off. They cite his stats that were among the worst in history for a rookie starter and project the slim likelihood that he’ll develop because of the history of rookies with poor stats in that range who never worked past their abysmal first seasons.If you’re only about getting the correct answer (then it’s unlikely you’re reading this post), then staying away from Goff is the statistically correct course of action. A quarterback with a horrific rookie year for a team that fired the coach that helped draft him and is now working with a second coach who may not be tied to him long-term is not a safe option relative to other young quarterbacks.
However, if it’s equally important for you to get the correct reasons for the answer, then I have concerns about many of these attempts to correlate Goff’s season with past history. How many of these statistical studies included the context of offensive scheme switches as radical as the Air Raid to the West Coast Offense? Did these studies have any baseline data that examined the quality of each team’s receiving corps?
I doubt any.
As I’ve written about extensively, Goff learning the West Coast Offense would be like learning Chinese. Executing the WCO during his first year would be like getting dropped into Hong Kong, asking the first person he flagged down where to find the nearest bathroom while badly needing to use one, and getting this answer in Chinese spoken at a rapid rate:
Sure, you walk five and a half blocks, look for the blue and yellow neon sign on the left about three flights up that reads, “Tasty Duck,” and below it on the ground floor is a pink door. Ring the white button on the panel—not the red one, it doesn’t work—and when the electronic locks click open, enter through the hall, go three flights upstairs and then down the hall past eight doors. The ninth door is a bathroom.
Most students of a new language need to be immersed in a culture for a period of time before they can follow an explanation this detailed when spoken in the rapid fashion of a native speaker. If their lessons were mostly in a classroom and practice sessions with a language partner, this situation would be virtually impossible for them to comprehend. Their brains are likely hung up on key words that didn’t sound familiar and it forced them to miss what they otherwise would have recognized. The fact that they desperately need to use the bathroom wouldn’t help either.
This scenario is a lot like Goff entering a ball game against the top percentile of the world’s football-playing athletes in terms of physical, technical, and intellectual skill for the game. While many new students of a language usually go to a new country with a buddy who either knows the language well or has a guide book and a dictionary, Goff’s companions (his receivers) refused to watch game film with him on their own time.
Even so, there were positives from Goff’s first season that most glossed over. One thing I’ve noticed consistently is that Goff throws a nice deep ball and he wanted to be aggressive.
It’s not a pinpoint throw but there’s a good balance between having air under the ball with a decent amount of velocity for a pass that travels 53 yards from pitch to catch. Anytime a quarterback can deliver the ball 45-50 yards with this requisite velocity, his arm strength isn’t an issue.
Goff often showed a quick processor for a guy learning the West Coast Offense with verbiage and choreographed movement that is often the most difficult offensive scheme in football (don’t get this statement confused with the Rams play calling decisions which were criticized as “high school like”).
Here’s another example of seeing the correct opening. He misses the throw due to a compressed pocket, but the recognition was there.
Rams receivers also dropped their share of passes in critical moments last year. The Thomas drop in the first quarter of the Seahawks game shown above was one big-time example. Here’s Brian Quick doing the same on a good tight-window throw in the middle of the field.
Here’s an on-time throw that bounces off Kenny Britt’s hands in the red zone.
What isn’t mentioned enough is Goff’s pocket presence. He’s good at executing small movements to avoid pressure in a timely fashion, reset, and fire with accuracy. A lot of quarterbacks can move, but they can’t reset and fire accurately. This is where Wentz struggles more often than Goff.
Here’s another timely slide and throw on the move to his left for a first down. Goff often waited until the last moment to make his move in the pocket against interior pressure at Cal, and this is a positive against interior pressure.
While we’re seeing a lot of short throws this preseason, Goff displayed skill in the intermediate game repeatedly last year. Here’s a pinpoint throw after great recognition of the blitz and coverage behind it.
This year, Goff has a coach with a modern grasp of offenses, more receivers with a proven work ethic and greater skill, and a year of experience with West Coast Offensive principles. Are the odds against him? Yes. Are they against him because of last year’s stats? No, they are against him because politically, Goff’s coach isn’t tied to him, the team is still in rebuilding mode, and the NFL has a great deal of impatience with developing quarterbacks.
However, if Goff shows improvement, he has much better receivers in Sammy Watkins, Robert Woods, and Cooper Kupp, who could deliver excellent value this year. It also means that those getting their shovels ready for Todd Gurley might also be premature. The examples above reveal that Goff has a lot of the tools. The question is whether he has enough.
