National Football League

Jared Goff is looking forward to stability in his second season with the Rams

Updated Jan. 25, 2023 10:58 a.m. ET

Andrew Lawrence/Sports Illustrated

Last season was a real character-builder for Jared Goff. Yes, the former Cal quarterback was selected with the first pick in the 2016 NFL draft. But the Rams, the team that took him, were in transition. After a cross-country move from St. Louis to Los Angeles, the organization slogged to a 4–12 record and fired coach Jeff Fisher with three games remaining. Goff didn’t start until Week 11 and made an uneven impression when he did, completing a little more than 50% of his passes for 1,089 yards, five touchdowns and seven interceptions—numbers that compared unfavorably with a rookie QB cohort that included Dallas’s Dak Prescott (67.8% completion rate through 16 starts) and Philly’s Carson Wentz (62.4% through 16 starts).

So it figures that when SI.com caught up with the Rams QB1 while he was in L.A. signing trading cards for Panini, Goff would look not to the past but to a future when his early adversities and the Rams’ coaching staff purge will look minor in hindsight. He also had a few thoughts on the Super Bowl QBs, his diet and his new neighbors, the Chargers, in this Q&A, which has been condensed and edited.

Andrew Lawrence:They tell us you will be attending another Panini-sponsored event after this, the NFLPA Collegiate Bowl Fanfest. And there you’ll be sharing your experience transitioning into the league with other rookies. What is it that you know now that you wish you knew coming out of college?

Jared Goff: I guess to understand that it’s a big deal, but not to put so much pressure on myself, that somebody was going to take me regardless. There were times where I stayed up at night wondering.

AL:How will this off-season be different from ’16 now that both you and the Rams are more established?

JG: It’ll be big. It’ll be huge for us to have an off-season here and not have everyone moving around. We moved to about four different locations last year. It’ll be nice to be in one place, focus and have a routine.

AL: Which Hard Knocks storyline was the last to die: William Hayes’s obsession with mermaids and dinosaurs, or you not knowing which directions the sun rises and sets?

JG: [Laughs] They’re both alive and well. I hear about the sun thing quite often. That was so overblown. Hard Knocks is good. Hard Knocks is fun. But there are a lot of things that they like to script a little bit. And making fun of the rookie is definitely one of those things.