What a year 2024 has been for Detroit Lions quarterback Jared Goff so far. He started the year off leading the Lions to their first playoff win in over 30 years against his former team while an entire stadium chanted his name.
Then he became one of the leagues highest paid players when he signed a massive extension in May and then over the weekend he married his long time girlfriend and Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Christen Harper.
NFL insider Judy Battista is suggesting that the fun may not end there for Goff. She believes he’s a dark horse candidate to win the NFL MVP award this coming season. Here’s here thoughts:
“The Lions broke through in 2023, winning the NFC North and getting this close to winning the NFC Championship Game and going to the Super Bowl, in large part because Goff has ascended into the top level of quarterbacks. He had the best completion percentage of his career (67.3) and threw 30 touchdown passes to just 12 interceptions. What gives Goff, who just signed a four-year, $212 million extension, a real chance to sneak into the MVP race, though, is what didn’t happen this offseason: His offensive coordinator did not leave. Ben Johnson was the hottest of hot head-coaching candidates, but he decided to stick around for another year, giving the Lions and Goff rare continuity for a top-five offense — teams in that stratosphere usually watch play-callers go through the revolving door on their way to the top job. With receiver Jameson Williams poised to make a big leap after an offseason free of injury recovery or gambling suspension, and with Amon-Ra St. Brown locked in with a new contract, Goff could finally put himself in the conversation as among the game’s very best.”
She’s dead on. The Lions were able to retain their entire coaching staff after making it to the NFC Championship game and they only lost one player on offense in Josh Reynolds. While he had production that needs to be replaced, the Lions have some options that could possibly do it.
We would add that with the addition of guard Kevin Zietler, the Lions offensive line is even better now than it was in 2023. It’s a group that offensive line expert Brandon Thorn recently ranked as the only elite tier group in the NFL.
If Goff were to win the award, he would be the first Lions player to do so since Barry Sanders won in 1997. It would also make him only the second Lions player to win.
It’s going to be hard to break into the voters minds though. They honestly tend to be a little lazy about it if we’re being brutally honest. Only 10 different players have won the award in the last 20 years. This of course means that the voters seem to just keep going back to the same players over and over again. How do you break into that?
Goff is going to have to have the biggest season of his career while the Lions also win their divsion and pull off the first seed in the NFC. That should be enough to get him into the conversation. But will it be enough to get voters to stop drooling over Patrick Mahomes? We’ll see this winter.