Transcript of Goff and Geno Conduct a Primetime QB Masterclass

Second and goal for the lions from the seven. Goff out of the gun, Montgomery to his right. Jared leans in. There's the snap. Jared on the end of round, gives it to Amun Ra. He's going to throw it to Jared.

It's going to go right to the end zone. Jared Goff. Oh, baby, on the receiving end of a pass from Amun Ra, St. Brown. Oh, Ben Johnson. I see you, too. That is beautiful stuff. That is Monday Night Magic.

It was Monday Night Magic, W-X-Y-T, Dan Miller, with one of the most fun plays of the year, one of the most fun calls of the year, one of the most fun games of the year. 42 to 29. The Detroit Lions beat the Seattle Seahawks on Monday Night Football. It was a showcase of quarterbacks. But yes, Jared Goff also as a receiver, Himman Amun Ra, St. Brown, became only the eighth duo in NFL history to throw TD passes to each other in the same game. You've probably seen the stat out there by now. Jared Goff threw the most passing attempts without an incompletion in NFL history, but it wasn't 18 for 18. Nick Shook with me on a Monday night. And yeah, we'll talk about the Titans Dolphins game, too, coming up. It was actually 19 for 19 because Amman Ra laid that out there beautifully over a defender and Goff with a little extra speed and some late hands for the countdown. What night. That made it 28 to 14, and these two teams were just getting warmed up then.

The one thing I thought was as soon as he scored and threw the ball in the stands, I was like, Isn't he going to want that ball? How often is he going to catch a countdown pass? It was that night, though. I mean, that alone was an example of where Ben Johnson has been deep in his bag of tricks, pulled one out again Monday night.

Yeah, it was really an antidote to what we've been seeing this season, where we're hearing the quarterback play is not great. If you've He watched Jared Goff over the first three weeks of the season, he even said it to the ESPN crew, it has not been up to my standard. When he's gotten pressure in his face, he's made bad decisions. And tonight, there wasn't a lot of pressure in his face. He only had to throw four passes under pressure. I think he took a sack in this game. He did. Two sacs in this game, yeah. But the play calls were there when he had to go down the field, it was on point. He knew what the defense was going to do before it It was a huge role reversal from the game that the Ravens defense, coached by Mike McDonald, played against him a year ago. And in a big spot with the quarterback Island taping, looming just the day away, knowing he might get kicked off quarterback Island. He just had a magical night with just perfect decision making. What more can you do after the game, though? Dan Campbell and Jared Goff both didn't seem to know at first that Jared Goff did not have it in completion.

Let's listen to Dan.

Yeah, well, I just gave the game ball to somebody else, so I feel awful right now. You have to say he. No, I knew he played a heck of a game. I did not realize he was perfect. I did not know he was literally 18 for 18.

That is hilarious. Shuck, what do you think about the lions after a win like this, where, yes, their defense ended up giving up a lot of points in this game. The Seahawks kept cutting it to one score, lions bring it to two score, back and forth throughout the second half.

Yeah, gave up over 500 yards. But I don't care about that, Greg, because for some reason, when the Seahawks and Lyons meet in Detroit, a shootout just ensues. We got it just like we did, I think it was week one of last season that would ended up in overtime. We got another thriller. For the first time after watching Goff and the Lyons struggled to put points on the board and finish drives against the Bucaneers two weeks ago. Even that win in Arizona last week really required some grittiness, needed Goff to scramble on a third down to pick up a key first down. They needed none of that tonight because they couldn't be stopped. And really, it started with the running game, Greg. That was the beauty of it was that they've had some issues offensively in the last couple of weeks, and they just said, You know what? Forget it. We're going to go back to week one in the drive that won us the game to start the season. David Montgomery carry us down the field, and he did. That set the tone, opened up the passing game, and Goff was fantastic no matter the pressure or not.

He was sharp all night. Really great to see from the lines because if their offense really does produce at this level, that'll buy them time to figure out some of their defensive issues and help them come into form as we near the midway point of the season.

Yeah, they're going into their bye week. I thought this was a big game because I think they've been wanting to feel like the lions again, and they haven't quite felt like the lions. I actually think before this game, the defense had showed real improvement this year on balance. They're a good run defense, but they've been playing better against against the pass. They were without Brian Branch the night. Melefono has been out for a minute, and I think they wanted to have a game like this. I think it's perfect. They get into the buy three and one. It's going to be a tough division race this year, clearly, and they can start working on things, and they felt like themselves. And you said it, they are, first and foremost, a run-first team. I mean, Goff only had to throw 18 passes. Jamir Gibbs goes 14 for 78, has a couple of really important They were effective in the red zone, and they want to run to set up the pass. That is who they are. You mentioned the Seahawks-Lions rivalry. I mean, this is a thing. We need it in the playoffs next year. It wasn't just last year.

It was week two, 37, 31, Gino Smith takes down the Lions in Detroit. The year before, week 4, also early in the season, also at home, 48 to 45. Drive the Seahawks, get it done, and put the lions at one and three. Remember, they started one and six that year before they started rallying, and that was a big time Geno Smith coming out party. He had the Russell Wilson primetime game, but that was the game where you were like, Oh, my gosh, they could really be an offensive force. And even the year before when Russell Wilson was the quarterback for the Seahawks, they beat the line. So Dan Campbell was very aware of that fact. That was a shootout, too, where they gave up 50 points. And there's something Aaron Glenn facing the Seahawks that just doesn't work. And they got to go back to the lab. You can't leave Carlton Davis on an island for this whole game. But I guess I'm not that worried, relatively, that they gave up 39 first downs in this game. That is a preposter. No, 38. So 38 first downs, nick, is the most first downs. And that was what the Seahawks did in any game by any team in 11 years.

That was the 2013 that magical Payton Manning season. I remember it well. It was our first around the NFL season with Chris Westling and Dan and Mark and Chris especially, enjoyed the hell out of that Manning season. That was the last time a team had this many first downs. And yet the Seahawks weren't really in this game, at least in the last five minutes. They kept it interesting, but the lines ultimately got the go-ahead score when they needed to.

I mean, that's what happens. We saw it in Cincinnati against Washington last week on a Monday night. If you find yourself in a shootout, you really can't afford to waste any possessions. They had a turnover early on the DK Metcalf fumble. They had a missed field goal. They punted in between there. Meanwhile, the lines go, Touchdown, touchdown, touchdown, punt, touch down, touch down. When the opposing offense is scoring at that rate, you have very little to no room for error. You must produce points. It was really that fumble that allowed the lines then to go ahead by two scores and build out enough of a lead that they were able to ride it out to the end. If that doesn't happen, we're probably talking about a game that comes absolutely down to the wire, one of the classics. It was already a great game, even if it didn't get that close at the end because of the fireworks. This is the modern NFL. This is what the fans want. This is what they want, points. They want air attack. And the rumors of the demise of the passing game, very overblown, evidently, based on this game Monday night.

You're right. And a key moment, you went through all those touch downs in a row for the Lions after their punt, or at least after their fourth quarter punt that I'm thinking. I mean, there were so many different touch down streaks. You could have chosen different parts of the game. They had three straight touch down, punt, two straight touch down, punt, and then another touch down. It's just insane. After their fourth quarter punt, Seahawks get the ball with a chance to maybe go take the lead to make it really interesting. And there was a phantom, not a phantom call on Tyler Locket. It could have been called, it could have not been called a pass interference call on a fourth down play where the Seahawks picked up the fourth down to get into field goal range. They end up throwing the flag. It's fourth and 13 at that point at the 50-yard line. The Seahawks punt, and they never quite got close again. Look, I can't believe it's taking me this long to say that was a fantastic Gino Smith performance. I think for most of the game, he actually was... I don't know if he was playing better than Jared Goff, but he was having to do more because he was under so much pressure, and he was playing really well.

I think he's been so locked in all year. He ends up with 395 yards, a breakdown, and unfortunately for his stat line, throws a pick in garbage time, basically, as they're down 13 just trying to find something in the last two minutes that doesn't work. They bogged down in the red zone a couple of times right at the end of the game, but he played awesome. It just gets me thinking, this was such a great game because if you just like individual plays, you just like seeing athletes do awesome stuff. This was the game for you. So forgive me, nick, but I'm just going to list a bunch of the plays, and I probably forgot some, but this one One game included all of these plays. The first throw of the entire game by Gino Smith was an absolute dime to the sideline, a toe tap to Dike Metgap in tight coverage against Carlton Davis. It was absolutely incredible. The Dike near TD in the second quarter where Gino Smith lobs it over and Dike is almost diving for the TD. They rule it a TD at first. It ends up being at the half-yard line.

Again, Gino Smith box score gets robbed. That was a beautiful play. The force fumble, that was actually a great throw by Gino to Dike, who breaks a couple of tackles. He's almost trying to do too much. Jack Campbell makes that great punch out for the force fumble. Aiden Hutchinson, by the way, 10 pressures in this game. Let's go for a few more plays. Gino Smith, 546 left in the third quarter. There were these back-to-back plays, almost, where he spins around under pressure. He's about to get hit and just throws a dart to lock it in the middle of the field to get a first down on a third and long. And then just a couple of plays later, a similar type of dart under pressure to Bobo, I believe it was.

Oh, yeah. Bobo fell down, too, and got back up.

It's just absolutely insane. Kenneth Walker 21-yard breakdown run was an awesome run. They pitched it to him left. He's going left. He goes all the way back around, runs around a couple defenders there. And now let's get to the lion side of There was the toe tap by Amman Ra, St. Brown, with over five minutes left. Normally, that would have been the highlight. That was the fourth biggest highlight of the game. If you're watching on YouTube, and it is a lot of fun, we have the highlights. You can see it there and the replay of it. What a fantastic catch by St. Brown, who had the best 6 for 45 in a countdown I've ever seen. I'm not done yet. Shook, we've got two more. The David Montgomery 40-yard catch and run was just one of the most Marshawn Lynch type plays I've seen in a long time. Actually, let's listen to this one.

Here come the lions now. Montgomery, the single back behind Gauff. First down from the 30. Gauff play action fake. Sets in the pocket, drifts left, and looks, now throws back against the thought. He gets caught, bouncing off and tackling. Getting across 35 is Montgomery. Still going 37. Going across the 40. Montgomery unbelievable to the 50.

Left sideline. High stepping across the 40 inside the 35 and run out of bounds down at the 32-yard line. David Montgomery, are you kidding me?

I'm telling you, all that was missing was, Get off me, child's play, the old Marshawn Lynch run against the Saints. There's a thing on TikTok right now where guys will narrate their road to glory player in College Football 25, where they'll be running through tackles and making all the... Sounds like that. I could have used that on that, too. It was that amazing.

That was awesome. I did hear a play-by-play guy in the college football game doing the... On a telecast, which was really cool. My Montgomery was stoned, and then they came at his legs, and he spun out. I mean, what a runner, what a player, Montgomery has turned out to be. Man, I was wrong about him with the bears. And then finally, let's listen to one more play. All of these plays happened in the same game. Yeah, let's listen to the 70-yarder to Jamison Williams.Golf.

Up under center on first down. Goff turns, takes to gives. They pick up the blitz. Goff throws. It is caught. Go, baby.

It's a 50-yard line. It is. It's Jamo. Forget it. God, nobody's going to catch him. You can't catch that man. Jamo to the house, 70 yards from Jared Goff. And he slams it over the goal post. That's going to draw a penalty. You can't do that. But damage done. Jamison Williams up into the crowd for the celebration. And he made that look easy. We made that look so easy.

You know why it looked so easy, Shook? Because it hit him perfectly in stride, over Over the second-level defender. The safety was flat-footed. That's an underrated throw. They had so many yards after the catch. Tonight, I think it was 219. And that's largely because Goff, he's that West Coast quarterback. He's the Joe Montana where he puts it exactly where it needs to be. When he got drafted first, that was the vision. It was those pretty passes that hit you in stride.

That play to Williams, he was hit so perfectly and so open. I think it's the longest I've ever seen a receiver start to celebrate a shutdown, he started high-stepping at the 28. For those of you who are not watching on YouTube, you could see it if you were watching on YouTube, high-stepping at the 28 to the point where I was like, Oh, no, you're celebrating too early. You're going to get caught. And then he didn't. It was just a magnificent play on their part. It is really fun to see them get to Jamison more often because he has that big playability that we didn't really see consistently over his first couple of years in the NFL. Now that he's getting to that point on nights like this where you need every score win a game like this, it's a beautiful sight to see.

It was almost like they kept scoring too fast. They ended up with 50 plays, which is normal. It's on the low side, certainly. The Seahawks ended up with 78. And again, a couple of those, it's inflated a little by those last two relative garbage time drives, but that's 16 more plays, another like 80 yards they tacked on then. But even before that, they were going on longer drives. Dk goes seven for 104, Locket five for '61, Smith and Jigba, 5 for '51. They got the running game going in the second half after not even trying in the first half. They actually only ran the ball four times in 27 plays in the first half. So I think both teams leave feeling some positives. But to get Laporta involved, to get Jamison Williams involved, to have this offensive performance. And then I think it was a big deal, nick, going into the buy to get a win without Frank Ragnar. Their on-off splits without Ragnar last year were miserable, and they played great up front. Obviously, all the line protection, like the calls, they were ready for that moment tonight. If they need Ragnar to sit out for a little while with this strained peck, then they showed they can survive it.

Yeah, Jared Goff is only pressured seven times. I know they had a couple of sacs, but for the most part, he had relatively clean pockets and he was able to operate. The way you beat them is by getting pressure in his face and taking away the middle of the field, which the Seahawks did not do. Managing to prevent that from happening without one of your best offensive linemen, one of your most offensive linemen outside of Taylor Decker, a guy that you can count on to set the protection and also block consistently in the interior. That's a big sign, a big positive sign for the Lions. I'm not going to point to their defense, really. I know they need to correct a lot of things, and they need to get cleaner. They had nine penalties. But this is the momentum you want going into the buy week, especially now at three and one.

Yeah, their defense, Thierry Anardo needs to stop just holding the receiver. You have three tonight. It's been a problem all season long. And yes, here comes the cold water on everything. And Seahawks fans, in my mentions tonight, when I mentioned, it's probably not a great sign that the Gino Smith is playing nearly perfect. I thought he was perfect in the first half, and they were down 21 to seven. I don't know if he had one negative play from his angle the entire first half, and they were down 21-7. And everyone in my mention is like, Yeah, they're missing all their starters and stuff. It's like, You don't think I know that? I'm saying that it's not a It's a good sign for them winning tonight's game. That was all I'm saying, that it's not a good sign. If he's having to play perfect and they're still losing by a lot, they're probably not going to win tonight. And yes, that was a massive factor in this game. They did not have Leonard Williams. They did not have Boye Mafe, who was leading the NFL in pressures recently. They did not have Uchena N'Nuosa, who hasn't played all year but practiced this week, and there was some hope.

They did not have their first-round pick, Byron Murphy, who had really helped in the run defense. And they did not Jerome Baker, their linebacker. So they were starting a fourth or fifth round linebacker who's been okay the last couple of weeks. But Goff really won over the middle of the field. Then during the game, they lost Julian Love, who's been, to me, playing at an all-Pro, Pro Bowl-type level with a thigh injury. So that's six starters on defense. So as much as I wanted this to be a litmus test of, all right, what lines often shows up, what Seahawks defense shows up, that's why we need the rematch in the playoffs. This is a great budding rivalry, and we want to see it with all their players because that was a big deal. Lyons had their injuries, too. Brian branches out. I know they're missing some guys, but that's a massive difference than basically every Seahawks defense that we've seen at least the first few weeks of the season before they had a couple more injuries in the Dolphins game.

Yeah, you could look at their schedule and say, Well, it's been a little soft. You played Denver, New England, then Miami without Tua, right? So three wins in a row. That's great. Who have you played that serious? Well, this is a serious team, but with all those injuries accounted for, you have to take it with a bit of a grain of salt not hang your head too much about it because you still managed to compete with all those guys missing on the defensive side of the ball. It's just that you couldn't quite keep up offensively. Look, all I really need to see from them right now this early in the season is that their offense can consistently score and that Gino is going to play well, and he's playing fantastically. Look, man, I know you lost the game, but it's a game that you can pull a lot of positives out of. You figure out what you need to correct. You keep moving forward because it does get a little tougher. New York, the Giants, they play next week, has a strong defensive front. They've proven that through the first month of the season, and they will be able to cause some pressures.

Then you get San Francisco, Atlanta, Buffalo, and the Rams. You're going to get tested. I actually thought the offensive line took a step forward tonight.

I actually thought against Miami, the edges were okay. I mean, Charles The cross has been good all year, and the edges were okay. It was all coming up the middle. I thought they were better tonight. Detroit's pass rush this year, other than Hutchinson, has been quite thin. It's really Hutchinson on Wuzerike, and that's about it. Although Gino had that stretch where he He was under pressure a lot. I thought it was a normal amount of pressure, considering he dropped back to pass 56 times.

Yeah, it was 29 %.

It wasn't that crazy tonight, and he does a great job. Part of that is makes him look better. He was getting the ball out so fast early. He better get onto QB Island. I think this was a good final statement. Jared Goff, who, if we had done the segment last week, I think he would have been booted off. It's going to be tough to move him. But that will come on Wednesday's show. Steve Weish coming into the studio along with Colleen Wolf and Jordan, our usual crew. Wow, that was fun. Do you have anything left to say? If not, we will take a break because there was another game tonight, nick.

Yeah, we did have another game. Not quite as exciting. I just want to say one thing.

Yes.

Jared Goff goes a perfect day for 18 for 18. The odds of Goff completing all 18 passes based on the completion probability of each attempt, according to the next Gen stats, one in 145. Less than a 1% chance. Yeah.

Okay. That sounds about right. If he played a game and had all of those passes, and he played a game every week for about eight years, I'm just doing the math very roughly. Yeah, that sounds about right. That is crazy. I don't know how they come up with that, but it is absolutely crazy. Not all those throws were easy. And yeah, Amon Ra saved him. I think I know why Goff wasn't sure at the end of the game. He was trying to think of it. You said, I think he threw one away that was called back by penalty, and that might have been what was in his head, where he had one throw away that got wiped out by penalty. I'm glad it did. Twelve for twelve, by the way, in play action for 229 yards. I mean, you can just find a million crazy, was Jared Goff in a nutshell. Play action over the middle of the field, hitting guys in stride. Nice night. Been so many nice nights for Jared Goff with the Detroit Lions. Both these teams are at three and one. I think we're going to see them both in the playoffs.