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    • Detroit Lions QB Jared Goff got really cool after five picks
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    Detroit Lions QB Jared Goff got really cool after five picks

    Vaseline Posted on

    HOUSTON — No, he hasn’t deteriorated. He just played a tough game.

    It happens. Ask Tom Brady – not that anyone says Jared Goff is Tom Brady.

    The best quarterbacks throw interceptions and miss receivers and throw the ball into the turf, as Goff did more times than anyone can remember all season. The best quarterbacks lose games, except – evidently –Patrick Mahomes. The best quarterbacks have off nights.

    Goff had a bad night. He completed exactly half of his passes – at least to the Detroit Lions. Of the six he threw to the Houston Texans, only one fell incomplete.

    So there’s that.

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    Hey, joking is allowed after wins. Besides, what else are you going to do after throwing five interceptions and narrowly missing a sixth? (In case you tuned in late, Texans cornerback Derek Stingley Jr. dropped a deep ball intended for Jameson Williams early in the game.)

    You’re going to smile and be a little self-deprecating, as Goff did late Sunday night after the Lions beat the Texans 26-23 with a 52-yard field goal in the final second off the increasingly golden foot of Jake Bates.

    “Cold-blooded,” Goff said of Bates’ kick.

    So did the 58-year-old Bates on the Lions’ penultimate possession, even making the final kick possible.

    But let’s not forget something else that made that rush possible:

    Goff.

    He was also a bit cold-blooded.

    At least when he absolutely, positively had to be. Do you need 6 yards for a first down and a chance to run the clock down to the final ticks before the kick? The Lions don’t want anyone other than Goff trying to find those yards.

    Even on a night where he almost threw six picks.

    As for the 50% completion rate?

    That worked in the 1970s, but it’s not so smart now, especially for one of the most accurate passers in the NFL. And while the shocking number of picks will stick with us, the mediocre completion rate could tell us a lot more.

    The Lions obviously hope it doesn’t say much. They would certainly hate it if Houston just gave the rest of the league a blueprint on how to handle this balanced, high-powered, and (usually) explosive offense. Yes, yes, when you pressure a quarterback, the completion percentage drops.

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    But have the Texans exposed a vulnerability in their emergency package and disguises?

    Probably not, especially since there are only so many variables a defensive coordinator can try, and Goff has seen them all. And if he hasn’t – if he sees something new, he’ll catalog it and sort it out by the next time he breaks up the meeting.

    No, what Houston did to the Lions had more to do with personnel, the combination of their gifted edge rushers, their skilled and powerful tackles and their sticky secondary. The Texans pressured Goff – on half of his dropbacks – And hindered flight; the Lions ran for 23 yards in the first half.

    Learn each quarterback’s run game and watch a quarterback scramble… in mild panic. Well, except for Patrick Mahomes, right?

    Wrong. Even he can’t lead an offense to 30 points per game without a run game and skill players.

    Football, as much as we cherish its elite quarterbacks, is not a one-man game. Now one man can enormous difference, for sure. And it helps when the quarterback is a difference maker.

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    So that’s fortunate for the Lions, because their guy is too, even if he has a long and difficult night.

    Although long And try are relative, and what may seem like those things to some may not necessarily be true for Goff.

    Because he doesn’t forget, and he hasn’t forgotten. Where he has been. What he’s been through. What it feels like to be thrown away. These are things of fear and doubt. Not five interceptions.

    What did he feel Sunday night after, oh, his fourth interception?

    “Mentally I’ve been at the bottom,” he said after the match. “Some unfortunate actions won’t deter me from my game.”

    Hey, he doesn’t ignore the frustration of getting a tipped and picked pass, or having his tight end knocked over, or getting hit and having his pass bounce around a phalanx of big guys before being reeled in by those in ‘battle red’ . “Not Honolulu Blue.

    A quarterback has to shake it off.

    “It’s a battle,” Goff said.

    But?

    “I didn’t feel like I was playing that bad,” he said. “I saw things clearly. The tipped ball? They made some good plays. Some things didn’t go our way. I never lost confidence. I felt like I did what I had to do.”

    His coach agreed.

    “The point is,” Dan Campbell said, “I know this is… okay, forget about that right before halftime. That was a Hail Mary, we’re just trying to bring it forward, a hope and a prayer. It didn’t work out, so now you’re down to four. Actually, only one of them said, “Ah, okay, I get it.” The rest of that? It’s just kind of a circumstance. A few things happened, the one with Sam LaPorta, it was a good throw, that’s what we tell him to do. And LaPorta is a little late thinking and then he doesn’t quite get to the ball, but the timing says, ‘Yeah, rip that ball.’ We were a little wrong. Him and Jamo? It should be a little bit higher angle, and so there’s just little circumstances that come into play and so for me, I’m not going to tell him anything. Because I don’t feel like this is, ‘Oh man, what are you doing?’ These weren’t ill-advised throws, it just wasn’t our day. And so when it’s not your day and you can still win, that’s the sign of a good team.”

    And a tough quarterback. Who can throw five picks and then convert the largest third of the game with a clear-eyed rope.

    Speaking of clear-eyed, Goff said he kept his Sunday night in Houston despite what it may have looked like. As always, the proof is in the execution. When it mattered, he made the plays. And that’s always all that matters.

    So he told his teammates, “I’m doing well, just keep at it. We will find out.”

    That’s why he told his coaches not to abandon the plan or believe he could still use the full playbook.

    Therefore, he indirectly tells you that “every team gets punched in the mouth. And the good ones respond.”

    Think of it as “callus formation,” another favorite term in football.

    For these Lions, who went out again.

    And for Goff, who wasn’t as flawless as he was during the comeback in Minneapolis last month, but still led his team to 19 points in the second half against a good defense that dominated.

    “To win a game where your offense gets converted five times?” Goff said. “If you can dig deep into those adverse situations and come out on top, it just prepares you for the next adverse situation.”

    Of course, he said, he’d like to get a few picks back. And he had to ‘swallow it a bit’ and accept that ‘yes, it happened’.

    Competition pride and okay?

    But he wouldn’t take away every confidence he had earned in this football life. Yes, five interceptions is a surprising and big number. Only nine previous Lions QBs had reached that number in a single game, and only one of those — Frankie Sinkwich, in 1944 — won.

    Still, there is context, and there was still a game to be won, and Goff led his team down the field to help get that win.

    What was his secret?

    “Try not to give up on what I know I can do,” Goff said.

    He didn’t. Not his teammates. His coaches don’t.

    No wonder the Lions are 8-1. They don’t forget. But they don’t live there either. That starts with the quarterback, especially on nights like Sunday.

    Contact Shawn Windsor: [email protected]. Follow him @shawnwindsor.

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