Raise your hand when you see this one coming. Following last night’s news that the Lions’ fullback Matthew Stafford would welcome a trade with the Rams, we now hear Los Angeles head around to their current caller. Jourdan Rodrigue of The Athletic reports that the Rams had ‘exploratory talks with several teams’ about a Jared Goff trade.
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From a financial perspective, Goff’s trading is easier said than done. As Rodrigue explained, the Rams would be stuck with $ 22.2MM in dead money if they traded the former first overall pick. However, a deal will be more palatable if it takes place after June 1, as the Rams are left with only $ 6.8 million in dead money (plus another $ 15.4 million in dead caps in 2022). As our very own Sam Robinson remarked last night, Goff’s release is not realistic either. The guarantees in the quarter’s four-year agreement of $ 134MM last until 2022, and the organization does not have the contract until 2023 easily. Although Stafford has base salaries of just $ 9.5MM and $ 12.5MM for the next two years, Goff’s contract certainly complicates any potential trade.
After earning Pro Bowl knots in his second and junior seasons (including a 2018 campaign where he helped lead the Rams to a Super Bowl loss), Goff has apparently flattened out over the past two years. He intercepted a career high of 16 in 2019, and his twenty passes in 2020 were the lowest total since his rookie year (when he started just seven games). For the sake of comparison, Stafford has thrown just under 20 touchdowns just once since 2011, and that happened during a 2019 campaign in which he put together 19 touchdowns in just eight games.
As Sam remarked last night, Rams’ head coach was Sean McVay a GM Les Snead recently commented that indicates Goff’s status is less than safe. Rodrigue also note that there is a connection between the front offices of the Rams and Lions; new Lions GM Brad Holmes previously served as the Rams’ director of college reconnaissance. This is not to say that any trade in Goff would necessarily involve the Lions; given Detroit’s apparent desire to start over, Goff does not seem to fit into any hypothetical Stafford-to-Los Angeles agreement. Yet the connection between the front offices is too obvious to ignore.
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