Sometimes you get broken up with and it hurts for a while. You start to try to convince yourself that you’re better off without them. After a while you meet someone new and your realize that you truly are. For the Detroit Lions, that’s the case with Jared Goff and Matthew Stafford.
Jared Goff is the Lions best quarterback of all time. At first glimpse you might feel compelled to put Stafford in first. It’s probably because he’s the more talented quarterback and he’s won a Super Bowl. But that’s not the Lions’ Super Bowl and we’re not talking strictly about talent here. We’re talking about what the player did for the Lions.
Don’t come at me with that Bobby Layne stuff. I urge you to go back and look at Layne’s stats and seasons with the Lions. The real battle here is Stafford vs Goff and then a bunch of other guys are just there.
Quarterback wins aren’t a real stat and I’m willing to fight you in the alley with a broken beer bottle over that, but performing well in big time games is absolutely a thing and Matthew Stafford never really did that for the Lions.
He had some memorable moments like the Stafford sneak against the Cowboys and the separated shoulder touchdown against the Browns. He of course had a lot of those comebacks too. But when the Lions needed a big time performance in a huge and important game, it wasn’t there most of the time.
Take 2013 for example. The Lions just needed to hold on and win some games in the final games of the season to win the NFC North, Stafford put up four really bad games that saw him throw for 825 yards, two touchdowns and five interceptions. He completed 55.9% of his passes during that time.
In 2014 when the Lions needed to beat the Packers to win the divsion, Stafford went into Lambeau and completed just 48.7% of his passes.
Then there’s the playoffs. Stafford was never very good for the Lions in the playoffs. In 2011 he threw two interceptions in the fourth quarter against the Saints. One of which set up a Saints touchdown that put the Saints up 38-21 and put the game totally out of reach.
In 2014, you can blame the picked up flag all you want, but Stafford crumbled in the second half of that game. He threw a pick to start the third quarter and then he fumbled on the Dallas 42 on the final drive of the game. The Lions still had a chance to win that game.
In 2016 Stafford had his career worst playoff game and got shutout by the Seahawks.
Jared Goff, on the other hand, has done nothing but show up big in the big games. In 2022 against the Packers he balled out and threw threw the game winning pass in a huge win in Green Bay.
In 2023 he completed 75% of his passes against the Vikings in a game that helped the Lions clinch the divsion title for the first time since 1993. Something, as we noted, Stafford couldn’t deliver on.
Then in the playoffs Goff was masterful in two and half games. He completed 81.4% of his passes and threw the game winning pass against the Rams to end the Lions playoff drought.
Then the following week he completed 69.7% of his passes and put up 287 yards and two touchdowns on the Bucs en route to their second playoff win and their first NFC Championship appearance since 1991.
On top of that, you start looking at honors. Jared Goff just won NFC Offensive Player of the Month for October. No quarterback in Lions history has done that.