As LA Rams cool on Goff, NFL Rumors heat up on Texans’ Watson

Goff’s career hiccups, as does the Rams

And then the career of quarterback Jared Goff hiccuped. After three years of steady improvement of passing touchdowns, Jared Goff has now had two years where his passing touchdowns total has declined. Is he throwing too many passes? His 2020 number of passing attempts at 552 were nearly identical to his 2018 total of passing attempts of 561. And in neither case did they match his 2019 total of 626 attempts.

Goff is throwing more, but getting less. In some manner, much less.

So perhaps it’s the ratio of passes to runs. In 2018, Goff’s best statistical season, the LA Rams rushed 459 times for 2,231 yards and 23 touchdowns. In that same year, Goff threw 368 of 568 passes for 4,730 yards, 32 TDs, and 12 INTs.

By 2019, the Rams rushed 401 times for 1,499 yards and 20 TDs. In that year, Goff was 397 of 632 passes for 4,669 yards, 22 TDs, and 17 INTs.

Finally, in 2020, the Rams rushed 473 times for 2019 yards and 19 touchdowns. But it didn’t resurrect Goff, who threw 370 of 552 attempts for 3,952 yards, 20 TDs, and 13 INTs.

It wasn’t the offensive line. It wasn’t the running game. Even as Goff improved his accuracy in 2020 to a career-best 67 percent,  he regressed. McVay loves the passing game and only tolerates the run to set up his next pass. Goff right now is in a backslide.  But is there more to this story?

What ‘innovation’ to the offense have the Rams truly unleashed onto the NFL in 2019? In 2020? We know we certainly expected some of the late-season ‘fixes’ to appear more often in 2020 than they did. And we certainly were looking for the Rams to get more playing time out of their highly drafted skilled-players. In fact, the Rams 2020 offense was about as predictable and vanilla as ever.  Why?