Should Jared Goff Start Week One For The Los Angeles Rams?

On Thursday night, the Los Angeles Rams put an end to all of the pre-draft speculation and debate by selecting Jared Goff with the number one pick in the 2016 NFL.

While this certainly puts to rest any of the ‘Jared Goff or Carson Wentz‘ discussions that lead up to the draft, the conversation will now move to an entirely new topic.  Will Goff be ready to play week 1?

One of biggest selling points for those in the Jared Goff camp centered around the fact that he was seen as the most ‘pro-ready’ of the top quarterbacks.  Even analysts that felt Wentz possessed the higher upside of the two players often conceded that Goff was likely to make a more seamless transition to the NFL.

The flip side to this point is that Goff’s ‘pro-ready’ status may potentially put added pressure on both the Los Angeles Rams and Jared Goff directly to make an immediate impact.

There is no doubt that the expectations should be high for a quarterback taken with the number one pick in the draft.  A team does not draft a quarterback at this position to be a solid contributor.  Teams draft quarterbacks number one to be franchise leaders.  To add to the pressure, it has become for more common for quarterbacks to find immediate success in their rookie seasons.  The times of drafting a quarterback in the first round to sit for a year or two are gone.

Jeff Fisher didn’t shy away from this expectation after the draft, when he confirmed that the goal was to have Jared Goff ready to line up behind center week one of the upcoming season.

When you combine the scouting reports, the feedback from the coaching staff, the level of quarterback play last season, and the big price the Los Angeles Rams paid to get Jared Goff, it is more than reasonable for fans to expect that he would be ready to go right away.

But should he?  The Rams are still recovering from the failure that was the Sam Bradford draft.  Despite building a solid core of young talent, the Rams have consistently seen sub-par quarterback play hold them back time and time again.  The Rams can’t afford to get this one wrong again, especially since they essentially mortgaged the immediate future to make this move.

Many fans, especially those fans of teams with high draft picks, favor the ‘throw them to the fire’ method.  Lets get the guy out there to start learning on the job.  These teams aren’t often expected to be ready to win now, so why not get the young guys some valuable experience right away?

The one argument often used against this method for quarterbacks is the fear that putting them in a position where they don’t have the necessary support to allow them to succeed can potentially destroy their confidence and derail their career before it even gets started.  The Los Angeles Rams may be in a unique position in that they aren’t the typical team with the top pick.  While clearly lacking in a number of areas, the Rams do have two components that are often crucial to the success of a young quarterback – a strong running game and a solid defense.

But another trademark of this Los Angeles Rams team has been a habit for starting the season slow, as can be seen from the fact they have had at least three losses by week five of the season each of the last three years.  Jeff Fisher has often been criticized for being too slow to make early-season adjustments.  Fans will look to in-season defensive and offensive coordinator changes in recent years as examples of Fisher waiting entirely too long to make necessary moves to fix something that clearly wasn’t working.

Might it be better for Jared Goff long-term, despite the temptation to get him out there as soon as possible, to sit early and be eased into the lineup several weeks into the season?  Or, given the fact that the team is looking to win sooner rather than later and the current quarterbacks on the roster have already shown they are not ‘win-now’ options,  is it simply time for the Rams to take on embrace those initial growing pains and get the Jared Goff era started as soon as possible?