Sean McVay was named the Rams’ head coach early this year, which means has had several months to work with quarterback Jared Goff and he said on Wednesday that he’s come away from that work impressed with Goff’s “mental toughness.”
That’s left him confident that Goff can take a step forward from his rookie season and continue developing into the kind of quarterback the Rams were looking for when they traded up to make him the first overall pick in the 2016 draft. Any assessment that McVay has made about Goff is missing a significant data point at this point, however.
That would be how Goff fares in regular season action and McVay will get a chance to start filling in that portion of the puzzle when his team faces the Colts this weekend.
“I think any time that you get guys in the games, that’s where you get a chance to really evaluate them,” McVay said. “I think we’ve been really pleased with what we’ve seen in practice – the pocket movement, the ability to work through progressions. The best test is when you can truly get tackled and I think in spurts, he’s showed some really good positive signs of going in the right direction with what he did in the preseason. Certainly this game on Sunday will offer a great opportunity for us to see if what we feel like the confidence that we have in him and that we expect to see. Looking forward to seeing him deliver and we have a lot of confidence in Jared that he’ll do that.”
McVay’s background as an offensive coach who helped Kirk Cousins succeed in Washington and the hope he can do the same for Goff was a big part of why he got the Rams job. Sunday will provide the first look into how that process is going in Los Angeles.