Getty Detroit Lions quarterback Jared Goff shared what it meant to beat his former team, the Los Angeles Rams, in the postseason.
A popular storyline for the Detroit Lions heading into their NFC Wild Card matchup against the Los Angeles Rams was the revenge game narrative from quarterback Jared Goff’s perspective. The Rams drafted Goff No. 1 overall in 2016, but despite him leading the team to a Super Bowl appearance in his third season, the Rams traded him along with multiple first-round picks for Matthew Stafford.
The trade led to a Super Bowl victory for the Rams in February 2022. But two years later, Goff and the Lions now have the better end of the deal, as the quarterback led Detroit to a 24-23 victory over Los Angeles on January 14.
But Goff refused to let that be the focus. The quarterback downplayed the narrative about himself and stressed his team when he spoke to NBC’s Melissa Stark on the field after the game.
“It means a lot,” Goff said on NBC about the win for him personally. “But this team is special. This team is really special, and it’s about our team. Obviously, I have some personal connections over there, but it’s about our team.
“It’s about the 2023 Lions. We just broke a streak that’s been going on for 30 years. But it’s about this squad. It’s about the people in this locker room and this building. It’s about our head coach Dan Campbell — what he infuses in all of us, it’s about us.”
The 1-point victory broke a 9-game postseason losing streak for the Lions. It was Detroit’s first playoff win since January 1992.
Furthermore, it was just the franchise’s second playoff win in the last 65 years.
Lions’ Jared Goff Delivers in Narrow Postseason Victory
Goff may never share publicly how important beating the Rams in the postseason was to him, but early on, it certainly looked like he intended to dissect Los Angeles’ defense. He completed his first 10 passes in the game and orchestrated three touchdown drives to start the night.
The second half wasn’t as pretty, but in the 4-minute offense and clinging to a 1-point lead, Goff delivered.
His short pass to running back David Montgomery on second-and-7 with 3:24 left went for 11 yards to move the chains and keep the clock moving. Then on the first play after the 2-minute warning, Goff found receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown over the middle of the field for another first down.
The Lions could have called two running plays and left the Rams with just over a minute left in the fourth quarter after punting. Los Angeles also wouldn’t have had any timeouts.
But Goff ended the game with his completion to St. Brown instead.
“A route that we’ve been running for two years now. We’re pretty good at it,” St. Brown told Stark when describing the play. “We do it a lot. We can do it in our sleep. When he called [the play], I knew it was coming to me. I had to go win, try to do my best, Jared threw a great ball. Sealed it.”
Goff Fires Message Ahead of NFC Divisional Round
No matter what happens going forward, the 2023 Lions season will be remembered as a huge success.
The team won 12 regular season games for only the second time in franchise history and its first NFC North title. That gave the team its first home playoff game since 1993, and the Lions won that matchup, ending a long postseason drought.
Goff, though, suggested the team isn’t finished.
“We knew what it meant when this season started, to get to the playoffs, and then get this win,” Goff told Stark. “[But] it’s just the beginning for us. We’ve got some road left.”
That road will include another home playoff game. In the NFC Divisional Round, the Lions will host the winner of the Philadelphia Eagles and Tampa Bay Buccaneers matchup, which will occur on January 15.
It will be the first time in Lions history that the team hosts two playoff games in the same postseason. The last time the Lions won two postseason contests in the same year was 1957.