Notes: Detroit Lions Jared Goff had the best Week 7 of any NFL QB

Jared Goff is playing some damn good football, and it seems like finally everyone is starting to take serious notice. The Detroit Lions quarterback carried the team’s offense on his back against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, completing 30-of-44 passes for 353 yards, two touchdowns, and no interceptions.

On the surface, that looks like a good day, but nothing spectacular. That is, until you put those stats into context and dig a little deeper.

Take, for example, DYAR, which stands for Defense-adjusted Yards Above Replacement—a related stat to DVOA. In his weekly Quick Reads column, DYAR creator Aaron Schatz highlighted that Goff had the highest DYAR of any quarterback in Week 6.

Goff and Tagovailoa are tied in passing YAR but Goff gets a bump from a Tampa Bay defense that has been pretty good this year. On third downs, Goff was 10-of-14 with a sack and two touchdowns for 11.4 net yards per pass. The 45-yard bomb to Jameson Williams came on third-and-10.

As Schatz alludes to there, it’s not just that Goff was extremely efficient on the day, but it’s the fact that he did so against a defense that ranked second in the NFL against the pass by DVOA.

Widening our scope, Goff also had the best quarterback performance of the week according to ESPN’s QBR, which gave him a 78.7 rating for Sunday’s effort. Elsewhere, Goff ranked first in dropback expected points added, second in dropback success rate, and had the sixth-highest PFF grade (which doesn’t adjust for defensive talent).

The gospel is spreading across the nation, with Dan Patrick hosting Goff on his show Tuesday and proclaiming that he’s now a real MVP candidate.

“The MVP campaign start right now for you,” Patrick said. “Are you okay with that?”

“Sure, yeah. I won’t be doing much of it, but you can take care of that for me, Dan,” Goff replied.

“Okay, last 16 games: Lions are 13-3,” Patrick said. “Jared Goff has completed almost 67 percent of his passes, he’s thrown for 28 touchdowns, just four interceptions. He’s thrown for 4,100 yards. So this is the last 16 games, going 13-3. And, through six games this season, he is one of two quarterbacks ranked in the top five for passing yards, completion percentage, touchdowns, passer rating. The other one is Tua Tagovailoa.”

It’s no wonder that Goff is up for FedEx’s Air Player of the Week (vote for him now).

• More Goff content here, as former NFL quarterback J.T. O’Sullivan breaks down the good and the bad from Goff’s performance against the Buccaneers:

• Speaking of DVOA, Schatz also published an article explaining the Lions’ moving up to No. 2 overall in that metric, and just how special this Lions team is compared to the rest of their history.

• Craig Reynolds’ iconic block on the Amon-Ra St. Brown touchdown looks even better from the All-22 angle:

• Why did the Lions mightily struggle to run the ball against the Bucs? Justin Rogers of the Detroit News did a deep dive in his film breakdown.

• Movember and our annual charity drive is just two weeks away. On Tuesday, Pride of Detroit—and this entire community—was honored by the Alzheimer’s Association as the largest single charity event in Michigan for them last year:

• The Athletic’s Colton Pouncy has a great article on a very simple topic: Don’t give up on Jameson Williams.

• A reminder that if you don’t follow us on YouTube, you’re missing out on a ton of great content. Here’s Meko Scott with his takeaways from Lions-Bucs: