Jared Goff timeline with Lions: From Stafford trade to $217M deal

DETROIT — The cold Michigan air sent a chill through Jared Goff.

It was March 2021, and the former Los Angeles Rams quarterback had just hopped off a flight from California. Days prior, the Rams and the Detroit Lions completed a trade that sent Goff to Detroit in exchange for longtime Lions QB Matthew Stafford. For historians, the swap marked the first time No. 1 draft picks (Goff in 2016, Stafford in 2009) had been traded for each other in the common draft era.

For Goff, the move represented a chance at redemption. After leading the Rams to a Super Bowl berth in his third season, his star had fallen in L.A. Discord with coach Sean McVay and a sudden penchant for turnovers saw him jettisoned without warning from a perennial contender to a Detroit franchise in the midst of a rebuild.

At the time of Goff’s frosty arrival, Detroit represented a sort of football Siberia. The franchise had managed just one postseason victory in the Super Bowl era — in the 1991 season — and hadn’t witnessed a quarterback win multiple playoff games in a season since the 1950s. But Goff walked off that flight undeterred by history and the daunting road ahead.

“I saw this as an opportunity for me to build my own legacy, and being at the ground floor of something special — and something that we can hopefully build to [be] even more special than right now,” Goff said in January.

In three years, Goff has done exactly that. Last season, he joined Tobin Rote (1957) and Bobby Layne (1953, 1952) as the only quarterbacks in Lions history to win more than one postseason game in a season, and came one win shy of helping the franchise secure its first Super Bowl berth. On the way, the Lions beat the Rams — and Stafford — in a raucous wild-card game at Ford Field for the organization’s first playoff victory in more than 30 years.

Now, as the Lions prepare to host Stafford and the Rams again on Sunday night (8:20 p.m. ET, NBC), Goff, who was rewarded with a four-year, $212 million extension this offseason, enters the game as a player he and the Lions believe can lead Detroit to a Super Bowl in 2024.

“Where he’s able to go, our offense is able to go. So, we ask him to do a lot,” coach Dan Campbell said, “and we’re going to ask him to do a little bit more than he did last year because he can handle it. He’s proven that. He’s playing at a high level, and he also knows he doesn’t have to do this all on his own.”

Here is a closer look at Goff’s three-year rise in Detroit.