In Netflix’s Quarterback, Jared Goff says it was not ‘mature’ to trade him without a warning
Jared Goff is still talking about the trade that sent him from the Los Angeles Rams to the Detroit Lions in 2021, and he’s still unhappy about how the deal went down without a warning from Sean McVay or Les Snead. In the premiere of season 2 of Quarterback, Netflix’s documentary series of three NFL quarterbacks during the 2024 season, Goff calls it a “blindside” when referring to the trade that sent him and two first round picks to the Lions in exchange for Matthew Stafford.
Taking things a step further, Goff essentially says that it was “immature” for the Rams to trade him to the Lions without letting him know ahead of time that being moved was even a possibility:
“I would say about 30 seconds after that phone call (with McVay telling him he was traded), it was on Twitter. You feel like you’ve been betrayed, or like you’re not wanted. And I think for me, ultimately it was the fact that there was not a conversation had, and there wasn’t like a, ‘Hey we’re thinking of moving on’ type of thing.
There was nothing. You wish that it wasn’t such a blindside and that there was some sort of maturity I guess to have that conversation and to be able to let me know what was going on and how things went down, and why this is happening.”
While only Jared Goff knows what it was like to be Jared Goff on the Rams in 2020, it’s hard to believe that being traded was a total blindside:
Goff would seemingly know as well as anybody that Jared Goff was essentially benched for John Wolford at the end of the regular season and that he only rectified his place as the starter when Wolford was removed from L.A.’s wild card game against the Seahawks with a head injury.
Maybe Goff wasn’t going to be replaced by Wolford in 2021, but he must have sensed that Sean McVay was considering outside options. If Goff literally had no idea that his job with the Rams was in jeopardy, then if anybody needed to remind him of how the 2020 season ended it should have been his agent. It shouldn’t be a warning from the team that is actively looking for other starting options on the market but can’t say for sure if maybe they will fail and need to turn back to Goff.
Although it came later, we all saw how that played out for Baker Mayfield and the Cleveland Browns in the 2022 offseason. It’s not pretty.
Goff was asking for something that the Rams couldn’t give him. He also wouldn’t have been traded if he hadn’t played so poorly in 2020, necessitating an upgrade to Stafford that soon resulted in the franchise’s first Super Bowl win as the L.A. Rams.
Goff wanted better. So did the Rams.