History says Jared Goff is good enough to lead Lions to Super Bowl—just add defense

The Detroit Lions had never experienced the kind of continuity and consistency at the quarterback position that Matthew Stafford provided. Not in my lifetime, not in my father’s lifetime (who was born in 1960), so not in the entire Super Bowl era for an organization that’s been in the NFL since 1930. The closest names are Eric Hipple or Scott Mitchell, but they both only started 57 games respectively for Detroit—Stafford started 165 games for the Lions.

When Detroit honored Stafford’s wish to not go through another general manager and coaching change, it was the first time the franchise had truly bottomed out since he arrived to the league’s first winless franchise in 2009. It was a difficult reality to face what felt like the organization’s first true rebuild in over a decade, and it felt that way because Stafford was the football embodiment of stability and remained a constant source of optimism. When Stafford arrived, he and Jim Schwartz represented the new era in Detroit until 7-9 was no longer good enough—a relatively successful season in Detroit since the year 2000. From there, Jim Caldwell was supposed to take Detroit to the next level until 9-7 was no longer good enough.

What happened after that is sort of hairy, mostly just flashes of hills, all-terrain vehicles, and braggadocious reminders of accomplishments from years past. And if you’re a fan of our Twitch page, a lot of nacho cheese.

But this is all a long-winded way to contextualize just how radical it felt for Detroit to enter the football unknown without their reason for faith under center. On top of that, they were replacing him with Jared Goff, a player discarded by one of the league’s most innovative and respected offensive minds in Sean McVay. Stafford rarely felt like the reason Detroit couldn’t win a playoff game, but the Los Angeles Rams saw him as the guy who could get them over the hump after reaching the Super Bowl a few years prior.

Fast forward and the Rams got their Super Bowl. Stafford was mostly good, avoided some bad luck, and finally led a team to the Lombardi Trophy. A couple of years later, Goff led the Lions to their first playoff win, second playoff win, and was less than 30 football minutes away from the team’s first Super Bowl appearance. After signing a contract extension worth over $200 million this offseason, the Lions look like they have another stable signal caller and the trade has worked out for both sides. And it should continue to pay dividends with Detroit’s general manager—and former Rams front office member—Brad Holmes leading the way in personnel decisions.

Speaking of making the right decisions more often than not, that’s Goff’s superpower, too. He’s more Clark Kent than he is Superman. He’s not able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. He’s not faster than a speeding bullet. But he can be trusted to make the right decision more times than not: he only has 18 turnovers in his past 28 games. Since 2021, no quarterback in the NFL has a lower interception rate over a 38-game span—essentially from Detroit’s first win in 2021 through the end of last season—than Goff at just 1.4%.

When your quarterback isn’t turning the ball over, he’s not leaving points on the table and the defense isn’t stuck out on the field for too much time, potentially getting put in tough spots on their own side of the field or their backs against the goal line. Last year, Goff turned the ball over 16 times in the regular season, but nine of those came in just three games (Weeks 11, 12, and 14).

In the above chart, Super Bowl teams are generally good to great on both sides of the ball and this is why you see that cluster of teams near the upper-right corner. But notice how there are far more teams in the lower right (great offenses, below-average defenses like the Falcons in ‘16, Patriots in ‘17, a bunch of Mahomes alien stuff in ‘19, ‘20, and ‘22) than there are in the upper left (bad offenses, great defenses: the Broncos in ‘15 were the only team that ranked lower than 15th in offensive EPA).

Detroit’s offense could very well be one of the top-five units in the NFL (last year the Lions were eighth in EPA, in 2022, they were sixth) provided their offensive line can weather the storm. Three of their starters will be 30 years of age or older at the start of the season. If you add in the teams from the 2023 Super Bowl, 14 of the past 24 teams to reach the Super Bowl had a top-five offense in EPA, and all but four were top 10.

Of those four (Broncos in ‘15, Ravens in ‘12, Bengals in ‘21, and the Chiefs in ‘23) that finished outside the top 10, all of those teams had better-than-average defenses, ranking better than 15th in defensive EPA. Last year, Detroit’s defense ranked 21st in defensive EPA. The only defenses lower than that to win the Super Bowl since the year 2000 were the 2007 Indianapolis Colts (31st, played a below-average Bears offense led by Rex Grossman) and the 2011 New York Giants (27th, Eli Manning sold his soul to the devil to own Tom Brady).

Point blank, if Detroit’s defense improves to being average or slightly above average, their chances of being a Super Bowl team increase dramatically. Those chances would increase even more so if they could generate more takeaways on defense. Only four Super Bowl teams since 2014 (Patriots ‘14, Seahawks ‘14, Patriots ‘17, and Chiefs ‘22) have ranked lower than 18th in the NFL in takeaways—the Lions defense finished 18th in 2023—but three of those teams ranked in the top 11 in turnover differential. The Chiefs in 2022 are the only Super Bowl team to hold a negative turnover differential (-3) since 2014 because, you know, the extraterrestrial at quarterback.

But turnovers are a fickle and unpredictable statistic, what does any of this have to do with Goff?

Here’s the difference: Goff has a long enough track record at this point of keeping turnovers to a minimum, especially in this offense he’s partnered with Ben Johnson in tailoring to his strengths. In 2023, he posted the 10th-best turnover-worthy play rate (2.5%) of quarterbacks with at least 300 dropbacks. In 2022, over the Lions’ 10-game stretch to end the season, Goff posted a 2.6% turnover-worthy play rate, the 11th-best number among passers over that same stretch. With the kind of skill position players afforded to him and a top-ranked offensive line in front of him, it’s reasonable to expect Goff will continue to take care of the football and limit turnovers.

He can’t do it alone, though. Being careful with the football comes at the expense of big, explosive plays in the passing game. Last year, Goff ranked 24th in big-time throw rate (3.1%), tied with Mac Jones. He ranked 24th again over that earlier mentioned 10-game stretch in 2022 at 2.4%, just ahead of Matt Ryan but below Ryan Tannehill.

Death by a thousand paper cuts on offense leaves little margin for error, but if the defense can help generate more turnovers, Jared Goff is a quarterback good enough to lead the Lions to the Super Bowl. And though he’ll have less than 100 starts under his belt as the quarterback in Detroit, he’ll have the most successful stretch of team success in my lifetime or your lifetime—and that’s good enough for Detroit.