The Detroit Lions, in an unexpected turn of events, have been a hard watch offensively through the first two games of the 2024 season.
And, chief among the reasons why has been the underwhelming play of quarterback Jared Goff.
Goff has very much looked like a shell of the passer he was in 2023, a season in which he threw for 30 touchdowns and 4,575 yards and more often than not played at an MVP level.
The 29-year-old has looked like anything but an MVP candidate to start off his ninth NFL season.
He’s completed just 62.7 percent of his passes, and has thrown for more interceptions (three) than touchdowns (one). Those three picks, by the way, comprise a quarter of the total number of interceptions he threw all of last season (12). Along with all that, he’s put up a QBR that ranks toward the bottom half of the league (37.3). And if the season were to end today, it’d qualify as his worst QBR since his rookie season (18.3).
In order for the Lions’ offense to get back on track, Goff, plain and simple, needs to regain his 2023 form. If he’s unable to, not only will the offense be direly affected, but so will the entire team. Without the signal-caller recapturing his groove from a season ago, Dan Campbell’s squad will run the risk of free-falling and having its season spiral out of control.
Unquestionably, Goff’s level of play has a direct impact on Detroit’s success as a whole. Additionally, in the team’s 20-16 loss to the Buccaneers Sunday, he clearly didn’t do enough to put the Lions in position to win.
“I think we didn’t make enough plays,” the veteran signal-caller said in the postgame. “I think we had too many mistakes, and they had less mistakes then we did. And then ultimately at the end of the game, we kind of had a chance to win it a couple times there, but it just wasn’t enough.”
Speaking of mistakes, Goff threw two interceptions in the Week 2 affair, including a costly one in the fourth quarter as the Lions were driving in enemy territory and looking to reclaim the lead. After Goff’s second of two interceptions, Detroit proceeded to have two more offensive possessions, but each of them also stalled out on Tampa Bay’s side of the field.
It was a frustrating game for Ben Johnson’s offense, which managed to gain more total yards (463 to 216) and first downs (26 to 14) than the Buccaneers. Yet, Johnson’s unit produced just one touchdown on the day and less points than the Baker Mayfield-led Tampa Bay offense.
You can chalk this up to a variety of factors, including some rather inefficient play-calling from Johnson (i.e. targeting Sam LaPorta just three times, getting away from the run game, drawing up plays on third and fourth down that led to throws short of the first-down marker).
However, most glaringly, Goff & Co. failed to execute in the red zone all game long, and Johnson’s highly questionable play-calling surely didn’t help.
The Lions went just one-for-seven in the red zone, leaving a ton of points on the board subsequently. With a better gameplan and a more efficient Goff, the Lions could’ve converted a few more of those opportunities into touchdowns rather than settling for Jake Bates field goals. Bates ended up producing nine of Detroit’s 16 points on the afternoon, executing all three of his field-goal chances.
“That’s ultimately the difference in the game,” Goff said of the Lions’ red-zone woes after the game. “We get down there, we score touchdowns, we’d probably win the game and unfortunately, we didn’t. You tip your cap to them. They had a good, stingy, red-zone defense, and we didn’t make enough plays down there.”
It’s hard to find a silver lining for Goff and Detroit’s offense from Sunday. But, if there is one, it is that it’s only Week 2 of a long, 18-week season. The Lions have time to recover from the woeful performance and still morph into the top-five offense that they were a season ago. And as a team, the disappointing outcome could very well serve as a much-needed wake-up call, just like Detroit’s 37-31 overtime loss to the Seahawks in Week 2 of last season.
“They’re a good team, we’re a good team, it’s early in the season, and it’ll be definitely a learning experience, for sure, for us to look and go, ‘Okay, what went wrong and how can we fix it?’ I think if I remember correctly, we started 1-1 last year, and we were able to respond from that pretty well,” Goff expressed regarding the Week 2 loss. “It’s early in the year, but it’s a good learning experience and a chance for us to dive into what went wrong and how to not let that stuff happen again.”
Goff can not afford to allow his slow start to the season to linger and become the norm for him the rest of the way in 2024. He must bounce back and revert to his Pro Bowl-caliber ways from a season ago – and sooner rather than later.
Sorry to say this, Lions fans. But, if Goff doesn’t, Detroit will most certainly fall short of its lofty Super Bowl-or-bust expectations.
