The Rams made a massive trade last week by sending Jared Goff to Detroit for Matthew Stafford. The Lions also got two first-round picks and a third-round pick. This is probably the first time two teams swapped players who were both first overall picks (the OJ Simpson trade sorta counts, but only because one of the draft picks the Bill received, ended up being number one overall).
If the Rams read my blog post back in 2016, they would have known I was not very high on Goff and would not have wasted the #1 pick on him. Here is what I said about him…
Another reason I dismissed Goff was one of the two games I watched of his. The game against Utah where he threw five interceptions. I mean, some of them were not his fault, but there was really nothing there that impressed me. I also watched the Stanford/Cal game and again, he was really good, but nothing that blew me away. Best of luck to him though. I actually hate to see number one picks fail.
During the 2018 season, I truly thought Goff turned a corner and he was going to be one of the elite QBs in the league. Remember that game against the Chiefs? The Rams won 54-51, Goff had 400+ yards with four TDs and zero INTs. He then took them to the Super Bowl. I also started to like Goff because of his appearance in Ballers.
We all knew Stafford would be traded, but I never had him going to the Rams. I have actually been working on a mock draft (listen, the experts get like three right and people pay them money…I bet I can do almost as well).
It is funny how it seems like the NFL is going to an extreme in the quarterback direction. It used to be that teams would stick by a young QB for probably a bit too long. The Ravens gave Joe Flacco a boatload of money and after like fifty years realized that he was mediocre at best.
Now look at how teams are ready to move on if they do not think the new QB is it. The Rams and Goff. Sam Darnold and the Jets. Tua and the Dolphins. Baker Mayfield leads the Browns to a playoff win, something that hadn’t happened since the 1994-95 season. They have like four guys on the team who are old enough to remember that season. Maybe. And yet, there are fans who want the Browns to try and trade for Deshaun Watson. Can you imagine? Granted, that is not the front office (or is it? maybe they are floating that idea out there to see how fans would react), but the way teams look at short windows now has led fans to also think about it as well.
It is weird, I have never been all that excited about NFL off-season news. Trades are usually minimal and free agent signings are news, but they do not have the same impact as huge MLB or NBA signings. And yet, this year may be different. There are a bunch of teams that could move QBs and make trades to move up in the draft to find their future signal caller.
I think the days of trading all your picks for a running back are over.
