Former Rams full-back Jared Goff comments on trade against Lions

Competitive emotions came from quarterback Jared Goff like an everyday flash from every corner – sadness, confusion, frustration, hope, excitement and gratitude – and his head is still turning, a few days after the Rams traded him to the Detroit Lions.

The deal that ended his time in Los Angeles surprised Goff, and reality began to sink in first.

“Eventually they wanted to go in a different direction,” said Goff, part of a trailer quarterback exchange that Matthew Stafford sent to the Rams said Tuesday. ‘As the quarterback, as the man who is probably the most important position on the field, when you’re in a place you do not want and they want to move away from you, the feeling is different.

“You do not want to be in the wrong place. It became increasingly clear that this was the case. [The trade] is something I hope will be so good for my career. ”

In a half-hour phone interview with The Times, Goff said he learned of the trade immediately after it took place Saturday night, two weeks after the Rams were eliminated from the NFL playoffs by the Green Bay Packers.

It was a sudden end to the first pick in the 2016 draft, which reached the Pro Bowl twice, and two years earlier had helped the Rams win their first Super Bowl in 17 years.

‘I really enjoyed my time here,’ said Goff, 26, ‘I want to leave it on a positive note. Clearly, the end was not favorable and was not pleasant. But they put me up overall number 1 and brought me to a city that last had a football team, and was part of the rebuilding after 2016, and could help make LA football famous again, all that stuff I’m very proud of it. This is something I will always remember. ”

Between 2005 and 2016, the Rams could not make the playoffs. In four years with Goff as an appetizer, they reached the wild card round, Super Bowl and division round.

The Rams did not want to comment on this story, because it is so banned from doing so until trading becomes official in March at the start of the new league year. The Lions sent them Stafford in exchange for Goff, a third pick this year and two firsts in the next two years.

Goff, who signed an extension before the 2019 season with a $ 110 million guarantee at the time, is not sure when the tide will turn against him.

“This is the hard part now trying it out, when did it happen?” he said. ‘These are all conversations I may or may not have, and try to figure them out. This is the conversation to have. ”

Asked if it was strange that he had not yet spoken to the Rams, he said, “A little, yes.”

This season, Goff passes for 20 touchdowns, the least since his rookie year, with 13 interceptions. He also stumbled seven times and lost four.

After a loss on November 29 to the San Francisco 49ers, in which Goff had two interceptions and a whisper, Rams coach Sean McVay dropped his well-known self-blame and Goff called out in public for the first time and said the quarter should take better care. of football.

Along the way, tensions escalated as Goff missed several opportunities in a loss to the unbeaten New York Jets.

But an important moment occurred after he had a broken thumb on his throwing hand in the second final game in Seattle. Although Goff went through the pain and completed the match, he underwent thumb surgery the next day.

“The next day my thumb was so swollen that I would not be able to move it,” Goff said. “It was as big as you can get your thumb. Enormous. It was a hope that the swelling would decrease by this week, or to get an operation, miss a week and move forward. This was clearly the best way to do it. ”

In the final game against the Arizona Cardinals, John Wolford, the backup in his first NFL game, helped the Rams to a win and a spot in the playoffs.

Goff was recovering from a post-season start in Seattle, and was still recovering from surgery, but feels he is ready to play. McVay decided to start Wolford and turned Goff off to backup. But Wolford suffered a neck injury in the first quarter, and Goff came off the bench, passed for an attack and led the Rams to a victory.

With the exclusion of Wolford, Goff started the division game at Green Bay, and despite a still healing thumb, passed for a touch and made no major mistakes.

After the game, McVay was asked if Goff was his quarterback. The coach qualified his answer by saying that Goff is ‘now’ the quarterback. At a news conference the next day, McVay said there would be competition at every position, including quarterbacks.

Two days later, general manager Les Snead reproduced McVay by saying that Goff was the “quarterback” at the time. Five days later, the Rams traded with Goff.

“No matter how it ended, Sean and I had a great relationship and did so many good things together,” Goff said. ‘Won a bunch of great games. Won a bunch of playoff games. Won two divisions together. With so much success on the offense, so many good times and memories.

“Unfortunately, it ended sour, but it still doesn’t take away from all the times we’ve had.”

Goff still has questions.

“When you first hear it, it’s hard, it’s disappointing,” he said. “But you get so excited that you get a fresh start. You will be somewhere you believed in. That was clearly no longer the case here, and when it did, I do not know.

‘There are still some conversations to be had. This will of course shed some light, and I will be able to understand things a little more. But at this given time today, I want my message to be a grateful message to the city of LA and the Kroenke family [who owns the team], and to the Rams organization for my time with them.

‘It’s disappointing and unfortunate how it ended, but there were so many wonderful times and so many good victories, so many good memories in practice, the locker room, in meetings. That stuff will keep me going forever. ‘

The son of a firefighter, Goff, was involved in California Strong, a movement that provides relief to families who have lost their homes in the past year due to wildfires. Last year, Goff donated $ 250,000 to the local food bank of Los Angeles – along with a donation from Rams teammate Andrew Whitworth – with the effects of the coronavirus outbreak, which would make students dependent on free lunches. He has worked with the Inglewood School District on initiatives involving elementary schools, including providing funds for a renovated library at the Warren Lane Elementary, a project currently underway.

“LA has become a home for me,” said Goff, a Bay resident. ‘This is a place where I put my roots in the ground. Being able to influence the community in Inglewood over the past year or two has been the most rewarding thing I have ever done in my life.

“One thing I told them this year was, ‘this is not a one-year thing. It’s not just now. This is not a PR move. I’m going to be here a long time, and I’ll be with you a long time. ‘

“Unfortunately, things changed quickly, of course. But that does not mean that I leave them or are no longer involved in their community, or that I will help children out of difficult situations and want to raise them. It will continue. ”

Goff said he was “extremely disappointed and upset” when he learned the subject, but his mood cleared within thirty minutes after speaking to the Lions, whose new general manager, Brad Holmes, was director of the Rams reconnaissance and whose new offensive coordinator is former Chargers coach Anthony Lynn.

Goff spoke to the lions and said, ‘It made me go,’ oh my God, that’s how it’s supposed to feel. It makes me feel great, ‘how excited they were, how excited they were.’

He added: ‘As the past few days have passed, and even at the end of the night, it becomes positive and you start to feel really good about yourself again. You start to feel, I do not want to say relief is the word, but you feel happy, grateful, ready for a new opportunity. It is the greatest feeling that I was overcome that night, and even in the days that followed.

“Of course you go back and forth, and your emotions go everywhere. But mostly it was this feeling of gratitude for what I was able to do here and in LA, and at the same time excitement for the city I’m coming to, the city I’m going to bring a lot of passion for, and a whole lot of hope for success for ‘ a long time.

‘I’m not going to sit here and hit my own drum, but I’m very proud that I can be resilient to have it as part of my makeup. We had so many good times here, and then there were times I had to dig deep, be a man about it and handle things the right way. I think I did it. ”

Times author Gary Klein contributed to this story.