Sunday’s 27-24 home loss to the Minnesota Vikings was a rough one for Detroit Lions quarterback Jared Goff.
He was pressured on 47.6% of his dropbacks, the third-highest pressure rate he has faced in a game with Detroit. Goff was knocked over 11 times and took five sacks while completing 25 of 37 passes for 284 yards and two scores.
Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores was in his element all afternoon, constantly keeping the quarterback guessing with creative blitzes. Goff was pressured a season-high 18 times and had a season-low average of 2.36 seconds to throw.
"No concern, but there's certainly an urgency of fixing things," Goff said when asked about the Lions’ offense after the game. "And we did fix things, I think, from two weeks ago, but there's more to fix obviously. There's a ton to fix and a ton of things to get better at."
Goff's weakness becomes glaring in loss to Vikings in Week 9
Goff's been one of the NFL’s most prolific passers for the better part of his time in Detroit. He’s drawn praise for his intelligence, play-action prowess and accuracy from the pocket. But he has always been athletically limited when it comes to escaping the pocket and making plays out of structure, and that showed up in a big way on Sunday.
The Vikings got to Goff repeatedly, speeding up his reads and never letting him get comfortable. There were several instances where the play broke down early and Goff was simply unable to create anything on his own.
With Andrew Van Ginkel back in the lineup opposite Jonathan Greenard, Minnesota crunched the pocket all afternoon and got great interior pressure from Javon Hargrave and Jalon Redmond, who both finished with sacks.
Goff– and the Lions offense as a result– struggles mightily when facing pressure up the middle. It’s not like any quarterback is necessarily good when pressured, but there’s a growing wave of NFL starters who have the athleticism to escape and keep plays alive with their legs when the pocket collapses.
That’s not Goff. He’s a classic pocket passer and conductor in the mold of a Peyton Manning, an archetype that is fading away in today’s NFL. Flores was happy to take advantage of those physical limitations Sunday.
READ MORE: Alarm bells are going off after a disastrous offensive line performance on Sunday
Goff did hit some big throws that displayed his trademark accuracy like the 37-yard touchdown to Jameson Williams down the sideline in the fourth quarter. But on a day where the Lions only mustered 65 rushing yards as a team and Goff wasn’t kept consistently clean, he looked concerningly mortal.
“The line of scrimmage was big,” Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell said. “I thought we moved Jared off the spot. He’s as good as anybody in the National Football League if he can stay clean.”
A loss like this makes it crystal clear what the blueprint is to beat the Lions— get Goff under pressure and on the move.
Goff did have one play where he evaded a Minnesota sack attempt, but far too many others where the play was over the minute the rush arrived. Without the ability to escape, he would either rush the throw for an inaccurate pass from the pocket or take a sack.
“They’re going to get you at times, that’s who they are, and you’ve got to be able to win more than you lose in those instances where they are trying to confuse you and bring pressure in,” Goff said. “I thought today they won more than we did in those instances.”
Lions starting offensive guard Christian Mahogany suffered a serious leg injury Sunday that’s expected to sideline him until late December. Goff has already been sacked 14 times in the last four games, and the Lions’ running game is 20th in the NFL in expected points added per run play at -0.05.
So if the offensive line continues to struggle with Mahogany out and the Lions still can’t run the ball at an elite level, it could make Goff’s lack of mobility a much bigger problem.
We already saw the same problem bite them in their ugly Week 1 loss to the Green Bay Packers, and interior pressure is a big part of what doomed Goff to a three-interception performance in the Lions’ 45-31 loss to Washington in the playoffs last year.
In the past few seasons, Goff has had just enough wiggle in the pocket to keep the Lions’ offense humming along. But this year, he’s provided next to nothing out of structure. And with the way that out-of-pocket creation is becoming a requirement for NFL quarterbacks instead of a luxury, that’s starting to be a big outlier and an obvious weakness for Detroit.
The Lions still have a boatload of talent on both sides of the ball and a smart, accurate veteran quarterback who the team rallies behind. But if the offensive line play begins to slip and Detroit’s running game is no longer among the league’s best, it could expose a glaring, potentially fatal weakness in their quarterback.