When the Lions acquired Jared Goff as part of the trade compensation for Matthew Stafford before the 2021 season, the popular assumption was that the Lions would start looking for a quarterback to supplant Goff in the near future.
Things look a bit different two years into Goff’s run in Detroit. He capped a strong 2022 season with a nine-yard strike to DJ Chark for the game-clinching first down against the Packers in Week 18 and General Manager Brad Holmes said on Tuesday that the team isn’t in any rush to replace him as the leader of their offense.
Holmes said he “never really deemed [Goff] as a bridge” to another quarterback and sounded more than comfortable to keep the status quo in place.
“I agree I think he’s played really well,” Holmes said, via Justin Rogers of the Detroit News. “I’ll say this, I think it’s a lot easier to get worse at quarterback than to get better at quarterback in this league. I think what Jared has done this year, he captained the ship of a top-3 offense, and I want to say he was top-10 statistically in most of the passing categories. Again, you know how we approach the draft, we’re never going to turn down a good football player. If there’s a good football player that we really love, we’re going to make sure every stone is [overturned]. But I do think Jared has proven to everybody that he is a starting quarterback for us.”
Goff has two years left on his contract and Holmes was asked about taking a quarterback to sit behind him for a while. Holmes cited the Patrick Mahomes and Aaron Rodgers examples as showing that there’s “a lot of merit and a lot of proof behind that” approach. The Lions have the sixth and 18th picks in the first round, which gives them ammunition to use in a move for any player they covet.