Is Jared Goff a "garbage time merchant" or "screen merchant?" let's take a look at the Lions' QB's numbers and prove a Vikings fan wrong

If anyone has followed me over the course of the last ten years, then you know how much I hate the idea that a quarterback can be called a "garbage time merchant." when I was at Pride of Detroit I wrote several articles defending then Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford from this and proved that theory […]

Mike Payton — Detroit Lions Beat Writer
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If anyone has followed me over the course of the last ten years, then you know how much I hate the idea that a quarterback can be called a "garbage time merchant." when I was at Pride of Detroit I wrote several articles defending then Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford from this and proved that theory wrong several times. There's things I can ignore, but this is not one of them.

Look, let my sympathize for a second here. I've been where Dan has been before. I've looked at the box score numbers and PFF grades in front of me with zero context and thought that was all that mattered. Anyone who tells you they've never done that before is lying to you. 

We don't have to go into how Goff has had an 84.9 grade since Week 3 and Darnold has had a 78.9. We also don't need to talk about how five of Goff's 9 picks came in one game and he's thrown just four in the other 10 games. I'll let Lions fans do all the arguing for the other stuff. 

What I want to look at is the garbage time thing and the screen thing. Let's do garbage time first. 

Garbage time

A quick look at Goff's splits tells you that's just super not true. The majority of Goff's numbers this year have come in the third quarter. He has 937 yards and seven touchdowns in the third this year. 

There's a big drop off when you go to the fourth quarter. It goes down to just 519 yards and four touchdowns. There's an even bigger drop off when you go to the end of the fourth quarter when the Lions are winning. He's thrown for just 48 yards when the Lions are winning with four minutes to go. 

My understanding of garbage time has always been putting up numbers when the game is well in hand or putting numbers when the game is totally lost or you're trying to make a come back. Putting up numbers in the third quarter and then taking the fourth off doesn't make sense with the whole garbage time theory. 

If you want to make the argument that Goff is putting up numbers when the Lions have the game well in hand, then I have to ask you what you think he was doing while the Lions were getting the game well in hand? This just does not make any sense. 

Goff has thrown for 1,653 yards and 14 touchdowns while the Lions lead, but he's also thrown for 1,108 yards and six touchdowns while the Lions are tied or losing. It's extremely balanced. 

You might say 14 touchdowns while the Lions are leading is a lot, but you have to consider the context of those 14 touchdowns. Some of them extended a lead for 10-7 to 17-7. Is that garbage time? or 3-0 to 10-0. Is that garbage time? What are we even doing here? 

Screen

This one is the most annoying of them all because it's a lazy thing that all football fans do. If they don't like a quarterback, their first attack is that he throws short passes like their QB, or any QB for that matter, is just bombing them down field on every single play. 

Goff's average depth of target is 7.3. It's not as high as Darnold's 9.4. But Josh Allen's is 7.9, Patrick Mahomes' is 6.4. Are these guys also screen merchants? 

Darnold does throw the ball deep, but we're talking about 41 of his 327 pass attempts this year. He's only completed 21 of them. I don't know why that makes him an MVP candidate. Its such a small part of his game.

Sure Goff has only thrown 26 deep passes this year, but who cares? He's thrown two turnover worthy deep passes while Darnold has seven. Playing it safer isn't a bad thing. 

But let's talk short passes. 131 of Goff's 306 pass attempts this year have been considered a short pass. Basically below 10 yards. That 131 is 19th in the NFL. That puts him right behind Darnold who is 18th in the NFL in short pass attempts. 

Eight of Goff's 20 touchdowns have come on short passes while 11 of Darnold's have come on short passes. If you want to talk passes behind the line of scrimmage, Goff has thrown 60 of them and completed 58 for an insane 479 yards and two touchdowns. Surely that disqualifies him from the MVP conversation. Darnold has thrown 47 of them and completed 42 for 230 yards. 

He's not a screen merchant because a screen merchant isn't a real thing. Teams throw short passes. sometimes they work and other times they don't. Just because they sometimes work does not mean the guy who threw the ball is only good because he has players that do things with the ball after they catch it. 

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