Jared Goff Is Quite Good, Actually
First of all, this is not going to be an article that talks about why Jared Goff should be the starter next year. If you still think by now Jared Goff *shouldn’t* be the starter next year, I think I just have to refer you to this chart.
This is rather an article to talk about how truly good Jared Goff was this year, and how this kind of performance gives him a very good chance to continue being our QB in the future. While I have the chance, I’m never going to claim that Jared Goff is of the Patrick Mahomes or Justin Herbert tier, but it is to say is *objectively* a top-half QB at this point and was also top-10 this year. This tier of QB is fully capable of winning the super bowl.
The Traditional Stats:
Let’s start off with what Jared Goff did in 2022 in terms of traditional stats. The 3 most people will point to off the top of their head would be passing yards, touchdowns and passer rating. In those stats, he ranks
-4438 yds (6th in the league, 3rd in the NFC)
-29 TDs (6th in the league, 3rd in the NFC)
-99.3 Passer Rating (7th in the league, 4th in the NFC)
And that last statistic is with Jimmy Garoppolo ahead of him who attempted only 308 passes in comparison to Jared Goff’s 587. Other of the basic traditional stats are completion percentage (we’ll come back to this later) and interceptions, in which the latter he didn’t even throw many either. INT% is pretty flawed, but he is 3rd in the entire league at 1.2% with his 7 interceptions with only 1 in the second half.
These are what I consider “tweener traditional stats”, but it’s worth noting also
-61.2 QBR (5th in the league, 2nd in the NFC)
-7.02 NY/A (4th in the league, 2nd in the NFC)
-7.45 ANY/A (4th in the league, 2nd in the NFC)
-3 4th Quarter Comebacks (8th in the league, 4th in the NFC)
The “Advanced” Stats:
But for some people, these stats aren’t enough. Consider I’ve come from a baseball background, I get the skepticism with the raw numbers. What has he done from an advanced stats perspective?
RBSDM is a wonderful website that charts the quality of QBs, offences, defences, and makes easy to view visuals. 2 of their 3 stats (well, technically 1.5) view him positively (w/ min 288 plays):
-0.109 EPA+CPOE Composite (9th in the league, 5th in the NFC)
-0.194 Adj EPA/Play (6th in the league, 3rd in the NFC)
Like passer rating, this does include Jimmy G in the rankings so move Goff up a spot on both if you don’t trust his sample size. Like completion percentage, we’ll get to CPOE later since it’s a very similar statistic.
Football Outsiders is very highly respected in terms of their own advanced statistics, due to often its correlations between its statistics and the success of teams and players. In terms of those statistics,
-1467 DYAR (2nd in the league, 1st in the NFC)
-24.8% DVOA (2nd in the league, 1st in the NFC)
-5382 EYards (3rd in the league, 2nd in the NFC)
Which is even more positive than the traditional stats. I don’t even know if *I* am this high on him.
“But he can’t throw the ball very deep!”:
(Also he’s top-10 in deep ball completion percentage)
“What if this is a fluke? He’s been bad before.”:
This would be a great point if he also wasn’t good before. Jared Goff had the pedigree coming out of college to warrant being the 1st overall pick. Despite a terrible rookie year, he rebounded in 2017 and 2018 to be a top-10 QB both years, getting to the super bowl before being ousted by a fantastic defence with a fantastic head coach leading it. His 2019 and 2020 seasons were bad, yes, but for most QBs in the NFL, there are ups and downs. Neither should be discredited, but I also don’t think either should really influence your perception on him as a QB now. He’s actually quite a different QB than he was in LA at this point anyways.
But there’s the argument that Sean McVay made him. I don’t think we’ll ever know truly what the answer to this is, but it’s an irrelevant point regardless. Even if McVay was responsible for *all* his success in 2017 and 2018, that doesn’t change the fact that Jared Goff had the ability to put up those numbers in him. There’s a reason John Wolford, Baker Mayfield, Bryce Perkins, Blake Bortles and Sean Mannion didn’t all of a sudden become really good QBs in the McVay scheme. It still takes a good QB to maximize a scheme and its weapons.
“He’s terrible on the road!”:
Looking at raw stats, it’s pretty rough. Only 6 TDs to 4 interceptions? Here is every single road opponent for the Lions, and their defensive ranks against both the pass and run:
Most of these matchups comprise of teams that are a lot more beatable with the run vs with the pass. “By coincidence” (not at all), Jared Goff’s #1 and 2 games in terms of passing attempts, just happen to be against teams with better run defences in MIN & CAR. Without the meaningless desperation heave at the end of the game vs Minnesota, that game was alright. He had a good game against Carolina too.
The *least* amount of pass attempts Jared Goff has thrown this year is 26 in a game, which happened 4 times. 3 of them were on the road, and those 3 teams were CHI, DAL & NYG. Chicago was *really bad* against the run, so it makes sense. Dallas ended with a top-10 passing defence, so once again, it makes sense to try and challenge the much mortal run defence. Finally, Giants kinda mixes the two with horrid run defence which we definitely tried to exploit.
What is the point of all this? Really, apart from the disaster which was the New England game, this was pretty by design. In fact, Jared Goff’s home-road splits are really not too crazy different… apart from one stat.
HOME: 65.83 cmp%, 2472 yds, 274.7 Y/G, 23 TD, 3 INT
AWAY: 64.18 cmp%, 1966 yds, 245.8 Y/G, 6 TD, 4 INT
That’s right, it’s really only touchdowns. 245.8 Y/G would have ranked 12th in the NFL. If you care about INT%, it’s 1.49% which would’ve ranked 8th. Basically, Goff was still an effective QB on the road as a passer, except in the case of touchdowns.
Statistics That DON’T Like Goff:
There are two, which are both linked. Those statistics being completion percentage (65.1%, 18th in the league) and CPOE (-1.4, 27th in the league). While PFF isn’t exactly the highest on Jared Goff, they’re at least pretty high on him since thanksgiving:
Goff’s completion percentage is not really that bad, just being mediocre. However, it’s a pretty flawed stat that rewards easy passes for not many yards like checkdowns. Basically, if you’re a safe QB you’ll be loved by the stat. CPOE (Completion Percentage Above Expected) is something that tries to improve on that flaw. And it absolutely *hates* Goff, which hilariously, is probably due to the base statistic. He doesn’t throw the ball 15+ yds much in comparison to other QBs; but is efficient with it, but so is Joe Burrow who rates well in the stat (2.7, 4th). But Joe Burrow has a considerably better base completion percentage (68.3%, 3rd in the league) which means Jared Goff probably could afford to be better with his shorter throws.
Goff is not perfect, and here’s something he can *reasonably* improve on. We can’t expect him to suddenly have blazing speed to be a dual-threat QB, but this one he can totally reign in.
Stats That Matter, and Final Thoughts:
If you’re not an advanced stats nerd, you can just leave happy with the first section. If you are, or are curious on which of these stats often result in the success of the team…
Hilariously, the stats that rank lowest in this graphic are the only ones in which Goff ranks pretty poorly. This doesn’t mean CPOE is a bad stat, it often correlates to good QBs, but it is to say that the 9–8 record is *probably* not the fault of Goff’s low completion percentage.
At the very start of this, I talked about how the 2022 Jared Goff tier of QB is fully capable of winning the super bowl. Here’s some food for thought: In his super bowl years, Eli Manning had a passer rating of 73.9 in 2007 and 92.6 in 2011. The league-wide passer rating in those two years were 82.6 and 84.3. I’m gonna chalk up 2007 to just a crazy postseason run, which well, it was. But his passer rating in 2011 was 7th in the league which was 9.8% better than the rest of the league. In 2022, the league had a overall passer rating of 89.1, meaning Goff was 11.1% better than the rest of the league. I’m not going to claim as if Jared Goff and Eli Manning are the same QB, but it is to say that Eli Manning has won multiple super bowls despite never being really the same tier of other QBs of his era, like his brother and the Tom Brady he defeated twice.
Jared Goff may never be the level of Patrick Mahomes. It’s gonna be really hard for any QB to be. But as long as Goff can keep delivering performances like his 2022, which isn’t particularly new to his career, that’s okay.
