Jared Goff is doing just about everything you’d want from a quarterback through three weeks, and somehow that still hasn’t been enough to push him up the quarterback pecking order.
He has zero turnovers, eight touchdown passes, 802 total passing yards and a 116.1 passer rating. That’s a clean, efficient start by any normal standard. But in PFF’s latest quarterback rankings, Goff sits 15th.
Gordon McGuinness explained the placement this way: "With a 79.4 PFF grade through the first three weeks of the season, Goff ranks 10th at the position. Like Young one spot above him, a big reason why he sits where he does is avoiding big mistakes, with his 0.8% turnover-worthy play rate trailing only Jayden Daniels and Young," wrote Gordon McGuinness.
That’s the strange part of Goff’s early-season profile. He’s being dinged not for giveaways, but for the lack of splashy risk. In other words, playing it smart is helping keep the Lions on track, but it’s also helping drag him down in these rankings behind names like Bryce Young, Drake Maye, Justin Herbert and Jordan Love.
...Okay.
The idea that Goff is being graded down for his style showed up again when Dan Campbell was asked about comments from former offensive coordinator and current Chicago Bears head coach Ben Johnson. Johnson had said he had, "a little history with that, of calling plays for someone not so mobile," while comparing Goff to Case Keenum.
Campbell didn’t flinch. He said, "No.
Goff's game is cerebral. That's his game, and he's damn good at it.
We run the offense we run, and we're good at it because of Jared Goff."
Goff later told Amon-Ra St. Brown on the "St.
Brown Podcast" that Johnson called him right away to make clear the comment was not a shot, just a joke about a well-known limitation in Goff’s game. Still, it fit a familiar pattern.
Around the league, that one trait tends to shape the way people talk about him.
Even with PFF’s own numbers placing him inside the top 10 in grade, Goff’s style doesn’t invite the same kind of buzz. He’s careful.
He’s methodical. He isn’t forcing throws when the Lions have plenty of weapons and playmakers around him.
That approach may not feed the highlight machine, but it does keep the offense moving.
And with an easy schedule helping set the tone early, it’s not hard to see why Goff could stay outside the end-of-season award conversation. Whether that’s fair or not is another matter. For the Lions, the bigger goal is much simpler: Goff leading them to a Super Bowl win.
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