How the NFL's chillest QB launched an offensive revolution
In the midst of a wild three-year career arc that has taken him from rookie bust to MVP candidate, the Rams quarterback has learned to enjoy the ride. How far can his surge lift L.A.?
BY TIM KEOWN
A version of this story appears in ESPN The Magazine's November issue.
It's starting to feel like a revolution, and every revolution needs a frontman. Rams quarterback Jared Goff, under the progressive vision of head coach Sean McVay, is the leader of one of the NFL's most dynamic offenses. Just two years after 2016's top pick suffered through the turgid, sclerotic final days of the crumbling Jeff Fisher empire -- losing all seven of his rookie starts -- Goff is an ascendant star, an MVP candidate, a player who symbolizes the promise of the new over the stubbornness of the old.
"It's funny that the spread quarterback was seen as such a scary thing going into every draft," Goff says. "I played in the spread, Patrick Mahomes played in the spread, Deshaun Watson, Mitchell Trubisky -- the NFL is so stuck in its ways sometimes. If you don't innovate and adapt, you're going to be left behind. It's about coaches; how do you get the best out of your players? It's not by forcing someone to run what you want to run. It's how you can make A the best A can be."
This was a moment -- adapt or die -- and it called for something that's not exactly rampant in the NFL: men with the vision and confidence to change the paradigm. As it turns out, they didn't come to kill the game; they came to save it.