Analyst conveniently ignores any negative side of Jared Goff for fantasy in 2025

After a rough start to his career in Detroit, Jared Goff has been one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL over the last three-plus seasons. That correlated with Ben Johnson taking a larger role in the Lions' offense, and Goff has finished as a top-10 fantasy quarterback in each of the last three years.

Of course Johnson is now the Chicago Bears' head coach, which has created questions about Goff being able to sustain his recent level of play. New offensive coordinator John Morton was on the Lions' staff in 2022, so there is a vein of continuity there.

Fantasy managers who have Goff on a roster each year know what they are getting, for better or worse. He'll deliver big games when you don't expect it, and duds when you think you can confidently start him.

He naturally falls below the top tier of fantasy signal callers based on offering nothing as a runner, outside of a random touchdown once in a great while, with indoor/outdoor and home/road splits that tend to be notable.

You can talk yourself into Goff being an underappreciated fantasy quarterback, but the list of negatives compared to last year grew with the retirement of center Frank Ragnow. As ESPN's Mina Kimes said, Goff is "incredibly pressure sensitive" and his interior pass protection just took a massive hit.

Fresh fantasy analysis on Jared Goff conveniently ignores any negative

Goff made the fresh list of veterans fantasy managers shouldn't overlook in 2025 from Bleacher Report's Alex Kay.

Kay does not mention Ragnow's retirement, despite the article being published two days after the Pro Bowl center's announcement. Then he just flat-out ignored a notably tougher schedule for the Lions this year, with more outdoor games and playing the entire AFC North, to go all-in on Goff being dissed by fantasy managers right now.

READ MORE: Lions' dream of fully healthy defense crushed by more injury news

"There’s no indication that the 30-year-old will regress in 2025, although fantasy managers seem to be expecting a backslide based on his middling ADP of 85 and QB10 status that places him behind far more inconsistent signal-callers such as Kyler Murray."

"No indication the 30-year-old will regress in 2025." Goff might not regress this year, with all the weapons he still has around him, but to say there is "no indication" it could happen is to blatantly ignore the whole circumstance around him. And QB10 off the board is... right where Goff should be.

Then Kay got into Goff's "consistency" last year, ignoring the wide range of weekly outcomes he had.

"Goff rang up 11 quality or better starts in 2024, just one fewer than league MVP and No. 2 overall fantasy point-producer Josh Allen. He was especially reliable down the stretch, finishing with four consecutive top-eight performances from Weeks 14 to 17, helping many of his managers claim fantasy championships."

Kay referenced Fantasy Pros' Quality Starts metric, which measures how consistent players are. The "quality outing" threshold for a quarterback last year was number of games with more than 15.3 fantasy points. Chicago Bears quarterback Caleb Williams averaged 15.3 fantasy points per game last year (QB25 by fantasy points per game).

So a "quality start" was essentially considered to be no worse than a low-end QB2 finish in a given week. Feels like a low bar, doesn't it?

Goff needed the highest completion percentage of his career and a career-high 37 touchdown passes, both by a fair margin, to finish as the QB6 in fantasy last year. Kay seems to think his 2025 ADP should be somewhere around that, but a complete analysis of a situation that has undeniably changed says otherwise.