Before the 2021 NFL season, the Los Angeles Rams traded quarterback Jared Goff to the Detroit Lions in return for Matthew Stafford. Goff wasn’t happy at the time, but now he thinks it’s the best thing that ever happened to him.
During a recent episode of the Trading Cards podcast released last week, Jared Goff got brutally honest about the move and how he felt about it.
“Being shipped off and sent to a place to die, essentially, is what a lot of people think it was. And I was never going to allow that to happen,” Goff said. “I’m fortunate enough to be around a lot of good coaches and players in Detroit who support me and help me reach my potential.”
Goff admitted that shortly after the trade, he initially felt “shocked, confused, all the different emotions of, ‘What happened? When did it go sour? How did this all go this way?'”
“That lasted for quite some time, but very soon after that was the feeling of opportunity in Detroit,” he said. “That was really the overwhelming emotion once I got to talk to Dan (Campbell) and Brad (Holmes) and got to get out there to Detroit and really see the city and get to experience it. The feeling of like, OK, this is the ground floor, they’re breaking this all the way down to the studs and they’re going to build it back up and I’m going to get to be on the ground floor with them.”
In the end, Goff made the most of the trade, and he thinks it was ultimately the best possible outcome.
“In hindsight, it’s the greatest thing that ever happened to me for my career and my development as a human,” Goff said.