Detroit Lions looking to add more to Jared Goff’s plate. He’s ready

Detroit Lions looking to add more to Jared Goff’s plate. He’s ready

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The questions are not the same and Jared Goff will answer them.

No more talk about running into his old team for the first time. Or the old quarterback of his new team.

Also gone, at least for the most part, are the questions about his former coach. In fact, when Goff spoke to reporters outside his locker room in Allen Park after practice Tuesday, Sean McVay’s name wasn’t mentioned. That’s saying something, considering the Detroit Lions open their season Sunday night at Ford Field against the Los Angeles Rams.

And McVay. And Matthew Stafford.

So that is the case.

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Time has a way of changing the story. And Goff has been here for a while. Those old stories fade, replaced by the new — like his team being everyone’s favorite to win the Super Bowl.

Well, no everyone’sbut there’s no denying that the Lions are the darlings of many prognosticators. Goff isn’t worried about that, though. His expectations haven’t changed.

“Our expectations were the same last year as they are now,” he said. “Of course we have a lot more attention externally and teams might circle us, especially our division as the reigning champions.”

But?

“We’re trying to win the first game,” he said. “That’s all we’re trying to do and let the external story take care of itself and then, if we can win the first game, we want to win the second game and so on. So we’re really focused on that, and I know it’s cliché, but it’s really one game at a time.”

And there it is, just as summer turns to fall and the evening air cools: Football season may be the season we most look forward to in the Midwest — except for St. Louis, I guess, or Indiana — but it’s also a clichéd one.

There is no sport that evokes these kinds of emotions more.

Don’t blame Goff for using one. Give him credit for acknowledging that he used one, as any good quarterback should. After all, self-awareness is essential to any good leader, and leadership is essential to any good quarterback.

And Goff is certainly a good quarterback – more than Goodbasically, by numbers and by sight and, increasingly, by results. The only question that remains is whether he can lead a team to a Super Bowl victory. When asked earlier this week if Goff was that man, Lions head coach Dan Campbell didn’t hesitate:

“I think he’s everything we hoped for and more. I think he’s … brought a stable piece to us,” Campbell said. “A stable, reliable guy who’s going to do what we ask him to do. We’ll take care of him, he’ll take care of the ball. He’s going to move it, he’s going to be efficient, he’s going to be our captain.”

Three years ago—hell, two years ago—Campbell might have stopped there. That was the book about Goff, right?

Then came the back half of 2022. And 2023 came, and suddenly it didn’t seem fair to give all the credit for one of the NFL’s best offenses to coordinator Ben Johnson, and the offensive line, and the running game, and Amon-Ra St. Brown.

Of course, they’re all important, and without them, Goff won’t be playing in the NFC title game in January. But so will almost every other quarterback in the league.

Campbell clearly understands this. And so he kept talking about his quarterback after he had listed all the game-manager attributes. You know, the reliabilitythe steadfastnessthe take care of the football.

“What we got was so much more,” Campbell said. “The last three years he’s just continued to grow and get better and get better, and honestly I think he just wants more, and he continues to challenge himself and the more he does that, the more we tax him. The more we ask him to do, the more we put on his plate, because he can handle it, and he wants to. So where he can go, our offense can go.”

Consider what Campbell says here: Wherever he can go, our attack can go too.

In other words, it’s Goff. The pieces are in place. There’s continuity with the coaching staff. He’s got a great line, playmakers on the perimeter, slot guys, tight ends, game breakers leaking out of the backfield.

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Where this offense goes, where this team goes, is on his shoulders. That’s how it’s seen in the NFL. To some extent, that’s the reality. Goff knows that, too.

As Campbell said, “I think he just wants it more.”

The next step, yes. The last step too.

“So we’re asking him to do a lot,” Campbell continued. “And we’re going to ask him to do a little bit more than he did last year, because he can do it. He’s proven that.”

Now, no offense can win without a decent defense, so the Lions did their best to improve that side of things this offseason. And no quarterback can win without a few playmakers, except for Patrick Mahomes (though even he has one star, in Travis Kelce).

Mahomes also had one of the NFL’s most economical defenses last season. And when his team won two previous Super Bowls in recent seasons, he had one of the league’s best collections of playmakers. So what are we saying? That even Mahomes isn’t a one-man show — even if it feels and seems like it.

Luckily for the Lions, they don’t have to view Goff as Mahomes.

As Campbell said, “That’s why we have pieces around him on offense, that’s why we play defense, that’s why we play special teams.”

But they do need him to be the best Goff ever, to take on the extra responsibility that his team is going to give him and make something happen.

Campbell believes he can handle it. Goff believes he is ready too.

As for Sunday’s opener against his old team and the focus on that story? He’s thankful it’s now Lions vs. Ramsjust as it will be Lions vs Buccaneers in week 2.

At least, “it’s a lot easier to answer these questions.”

Especially because the old questions have disappeared.

Contact Shawn Windsor: [email protected]. Follow him @shawnwindsor.