If Jared Goff takes as good of care of the football early this season as he did late last year, he could break Aaron Rodgers’ record for consecutive pass attempts without an interception in the Detroit Lions‘ home opener Sept. 17 against the Seattle Seahawks.
But Lions quarterbacks coach Mark Brunell said Monday setting a new NFL mark will not be on Goff’s radar when Lions veterans return for training camp next month.
“It better not be,” Brunell said before the Lions’ seventh organized team activity practice of the spring. “We’re trying to win games, we’re not trying to break NFL records.”
Goff finished last season on a remarkable streak of 324 straight pass attempts without an interception, which covered the Lions’ final nine games.
His play was a big reason the Lions went 8-2 down the stretch and finished with their first winning record since 2017. The Lions committed the fewest turnovers (15) in the NFL last season, and played turnover-free football in eight of their nine victories.
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“If you take care of the football as a quarterback, you’re going to win football games and that’s it,” Brunell said. “The statistics will prove that. Take care of the football, whoever has the ball in their hands. If you do that, you’re going to win football games.
“We’re going to have a good defense, we’ve got a good supporting cast, I love our system, good coaching staff. Our coordinator is amazing and I can’t say enough about him. If the quarterback takes care of the ball, we run the ball well, do all the things we talk about doing, we will win some football games, but we have to go out there and do it.”
Goff struggled with turnovers early in his NFL career — he committed 17 turnovers in 15 games in his final season with the Los Angeles Rams in 2020 — and had ball security issues early last season that contributed to the Lions’ 1-6 start. He’s had at least seven fumbles every year of his career, with the exception of his rookie year, when he had five fumbles in seven games.
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Brunell said Goff, who needs to go 81 pass attempts without a pick to break Rodgers’ record (404), made strides with his decision-making last season and knowing when to challenge defenses downfield.
Goff finished with his third-highest intended air yards per pass attempt last season, though his bad-throw percentage (16.8%) ticked up, according to Pro Football Reference.
“When the opportunities to be aggressive present themselves, you have to take advantage of them,” Brunell said. “And the beauty of our quarterback is he has the ability, the arm talent, the experience really to know when to pull the trigger and to be aggressive. But at the same time understanding that a check down is a pretty, pretty good thing, and I think as the season progressed last year, we saw that. Not pushing the ball so far down the field and being too aggressive where it could really hurt your team. Just going through your progressions and understanding that it’s not always going to be there, but when it is there, you have to take advantage of it.”
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The Lions should be better positioned to challenge opposing secondaries downfield this fall.
Top receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown said this spring he’s working to be more of a deep threat after leading the Lions in receptions (196) the past two years while averaging 10.6 yards per catch. Second-year receiver Jameson Williams, who played sparingly while recovering from a torn ACL last year, is one of the fastest players in the NFL, though he’ll miss the first six games of this season for violating the NFL’s gambling policy. And rookies Jahmyr Gibbs and Sam LaPorta are dangerous enough weapons to give the Lions more one-on-one matchups on the outside.
Goff said last week he’s been able to “dial in a little bit more into the details” being in the second year of offensive coordinator Ben Johnson’s system.
And Brunell said that’s one reason to believe Goff will be able to build on the momentum he ended last season with, even if breaking Rodgers’ record isn’t part of his thought process.
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“Last year was last year and this year presents a new opportunity,” Brunell said. “You have to go and do it again, and whatever success you had last year, yes, you could build off of that, but this is going to be a new season and Jared understands that. We’re doing a few things differently with some different players, so there will be some challenges. As you guys have seen the schedule, there’s a little challenge on Week 1 (playing the Kansas City Chiefs) that we’ve got our work cut out for us. There’s a lot of time before then, but our guys are working really hard and I think the spring shows that we’ve got a good group of guys and we’re building something.”
Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.