Is Jared Goff Good?

Detroit Lions quarterback Jared Goff has been the subject of constant criticism despite his high level of production. Is the criticism fair? And what do quarterback discussions tell us about NFL play?

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The Detroit Lions have had persistent success over the past few years under head coach Dan Campbell, losing last year in the NFC Championship game against a team with a somewhat similar conundrum – how can a team be consistently successful while most outside observers are skeptical of their quarterback?

That could just as easily be an indictment of the observers as it is of the quarterback in question and it’s worth exploring in much more detail for each of those players. But I’ve wasted enough digital ink on Brock Purdy, it’s time to turn to a player I’ve been skeptical of that I haven’t written about.

This also continues on the themes explored in a similar question for another NFC North quarterback – how good is Jordan Love? And though that piece was grounded in some fairly basic principles of data analysis, this one involves a lot more in the way of vibes.

It’s been difficult for me to get behind Jared Goff. And it’s been difficult for me to figure out why. He’s seventh in adjusted net yards per attempt since 2021 of active quarterbacks and the Lions have had winning records in each of the last two years with him at the helm. In those two years, Detroit has ranked third in points scored per drive – ahead of the Buffalo Bills, Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs.

Goff has had some very poor seasons, but he’s had more good than bad. If we look at his adjusted passing statistics from his pro-football-reference page we can see four seasons where his adjusted net passing yards per attempt were well above the NFL average, one season where it was well below the NFL average and three where it was about the NFL average.

So for Love, we were able to look at the fact that he only had one full season as an NFL quarterback and found that we could ground skepticism in the fact that he had two half-seasons that disagreed with each other. But with Goff, we’re looking at multiple seasons – and those seasons disagree with each other.

Given that two of those good seasons also happen to the be two most recent seasons, is it so difficult to believe that he’s actually a very good quarterback?

The Curse of Expectations

In some sense, it seems like Goff set himself up to fail; after phenomenal performances in 2017 and 2018, his 2019 and 2020 seasons seemed like big disappointments even though they met the NFL average.

On the other hand, that’s kind of how the NFL works – average is generally not considered good enough. Often, quarterbacks considered “average” are well above the average level of play for the position – players like Kirk Cousins, Matthew Stafford, Trevor Lawrence and others are generally regarded that way despite exceeding what the majority of the NFL can do at the position.