The rules are the rules Adidas Vladimir Tarasenko Jersey , so first-year Rams coach Sean McVay has spent a lot more time since January looking at his new quarterback on a television monitor than he has looking him in the eye. With the team’s offseason program starting this week, McVay readily concedes he and Jared Goff have a long way to go in making the team’s massive investment in the QB look smart.

But go ahead and ask McVay what’s made him most excited. He won’t skip a beat.

“New Orleans. New Orleans. Watch the New Orleans game,” he says, laughing. “He made a lot good throws, where he moved, he slid, he had a good feel for the pocket. When things condensed around him, he threw for a couple touchdowns. He ends up making a zero audible vs. a zero pressure, where he gets to max protection and hits Tavon Austin on a corner route in a 3-by-1 formation.

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“If you buzz through that game, there’s a handful of plays that get you encouraged, where he’s moving, he’s making athletic throws Donte Jackson Jersey Elite , and he’s showing he can take a hit and get the ball out. He made a lot of throws in that game you get excited about. And he’s doing things mentally, where you can see he’s making protection audibles and getting the ball where it should be vs. those pressure looks.”

Over the next two weeks, we will obsess over where Mitchell Trubisky and Deshaun Watson and the rest of the draft quarterbacks will land. Most people won’t spend a second thinking about the guys we were obsessing over a year ago. But for those quarterbacks—Goff and fellow 2016 first-rounders Carson Wentz and Paxton Lynch—these weeks are critical, maybe moreso than they are for even Trubisky and Watson.


In this week’s Game Plan, we’re going heavy on the draft, with a look at the big-name quarterback who’s falling, the few knocks on Myles Garrett, how football teams look at college basketball players, why the Giants and Steelers and Chargers should be looking closely at young quarterbacks, and much more.

But we’ll start with the 2016 first-round quarterbacks, and what many coaches believe is the most critical offseason of any player’s career—the one between rookie year and Year 2, when growth should be at its most rapid. It started for Lynch in Denver on Monday Justin Bethel Super Bowl LI Jersey , and Wentz and the Eagles get going next Monday.

Likewise, Goff and McVay are now three days in. And McVay does have those impressions from the tape. As he explained, “The two characteristics that we really value a lot from that position—are you a natural thrower of the football, and are you tough enough not to flinch in the face of the rush? He has both those things.”


Conversely, McVay won’t hesitate to admit he doesn’t know yet what ultimately he’ll need to know most about Goff. And to get there, he links the process ahead to a belief that’s deeply embedded in McVay’s football heritage.

“This goes back to what my grandpa (ex-Niners architect John McVay) instilled in me, from Bill (Walsh),” McVay said. “The quarterback position is the most difficult position. So everything that we do is geared towards making the most difficult position as easy as possible. And everything that you do is with the quarterback in mind first.

“And the thing that was great about having two guys like Kirk (Cousins) and Colt (McCoy in Washington), who took such great ownership of what we were trying to get done, they could explain why they liked a play. And if they didn’t like a certain play, whether it was Kirk or if Colt was playing, then we weren’t gonna call it. I thought it showed the value of having that relationship and rapport.”

• WHERE THE DRAFT QBS SHOULD GO: Andy Benoit finds the best fits for Mitch Trubisky Tremaine Edmunds Jersey Elite , Deshaun Watson, DeShone Kizer and more

And there you have the biggest goal set for Goff this spring.

To earn veto power that Cousins and McCoy attained over the next 11 weeks, as the coach sees it, two things have to be achieved. Goff needs to understand the offense well enough to articulate the “why.” And Goff, McVay, coordinator Matt LaFleur and QBs coach Greg Olson need to build the trust to have that kind of open discourse.

Is it different to try and give a 22-year-old that kind of latitude? A little. But Cousins’ results, and how a colorful offensive group in Washington responded to McVay’s style is proof positive that it’s been effective.

As for where they are now, the limited face time coach and quarterback have had has been largely uneventful. Goff was in two-hour meetings with the staff Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. They covered style of play, formations, motions and personnel groupings on Day 1, baseline drop-back concepts on Day 2 Jeremiah Attaochu Super Bowl LI Jersey , and protections Wednesday. It wasn’t intimate—all the skill players were there.

But McVay was able to get a little more in January when he spoke with Goff during his interview process.

“The thing I really liked in how he came off, even before he had any idea we’d be working together, clearly things didn’t go as well as we would’ve liked last year, but he made no excuses,” McVay said. “He took full accountability and I sensed a guy who was challenged to respond in the right kind of ways, as opposed to making excuses for not playing as well as we would’ve liked last year.”


Of course, Goff hasn’t been sitting on his hands the past three months. One big focus in his work away from the facility has been on finding consistency in the kind of stroke he had. Authentic Womens Kareem Martin Jersey , Authentic Womens Natrell Jamerson Jersey , Authentic Womens Kolton Miller Jersey , Authentic Womens Robert Golden Jersey ,