Former NFL player says what everyone needs to hear about Lions' quarterback Jared Goff

The Detroit Lions just declared Jared Goff their long term guy of the future a couple weeks ago when they signed him to a four-year extension and made him one of the highest paid quarterbacks in the NFL. 

Since then there's been two different things that have happened. The first one is disrespect. ESPN's Mike Clay projected that Goff would have the worst year of his career in 2024 and Pro Football Focus's Trevor Sikkema ranked Goff as his 16th quarterback in his quarterback rankings. You'd think this wasn't a guy that has finished top five in every major passing stat in the last two seasons. 

Besides the disrespect, the other thing that's being talked about is how Jared Goff could reset the market for quarterbacks despite not being considered an "elite" quarterback. The question now is if Goff got what he got, what is Tua Tagovailoa, Trevor Lawrence or Dak Prescott going to get? 

The prevailing thought here is that those guys have been better than Goff. They haven't been and ESPN analyst and former Cowboys defensive lineman Marcus Spears let everyone know that on NFL Live this week. 

"This team should have been in the Super Bowl. That is the reality of what we watched Detroit go up to San Francisco and do and Jared Goff delivered in those moments. So I just don't want people to forget how good he was in those moments last year, he had to make plays against Tampa in a playoff game before the NFC Championship. He was phenomenal when the chips were on the line" Spears said. "And that is the conversation we having with some other guys and it's making it hard to talk about their contracts because they didn't deliver in that particular moment. Jared Goff did."

That's it right there. There's so much talk about how these other guys should be getting more money than Goff and they have nothing to base that on. Dak Prescott has been very bad in the playoffs. Especially this last season when he turned the ball over multiple times in a Wild Card loss to the Packers. 

Tua Tagovailoa had a really bad showing against the Chiefs in the playoffs and Trevor Lawrence didn't even play in the playoffs because the Jaguars didn't make it. He also notoriously has 60 turnovers in 50 career games. 

Goff on the other hand was great in all three playoff games. Especially the game against the Rams that saw him complete 81.4% of his passes and nail the biggest pass in the franchises last 30 years.

I get it, it's really hard for some people to get over the idea that Jared Goff isn't a bad quarterback despite having a bad ending to his time with the Rams. It's burnt into people's minds. The reality is that he's been one of the best quarterbacks in the league in the last two years and he's helped his team to get to higher heights than they've been in decades. Spears absolutely said what needed to be said here.