Fifty-nine thousand people were in attendance in California Memorial Stadium to watch Jared Goff score the first touchdown of his college career. Ten minutes and forty-nine seconds were left in the third quarter, and the Golden Bears were trailing Northwestern by ten points. Goff took the snap out of the shotgun from center Semisi Uluave, stepped up in the pocket, and connected with wide receiver Chris Harper for a 52 yard touchdown.
Twelve-thousand yards, 96 touchdowns, and a first-team all-conference selection later, Goff is poised to return a struggling Rams offense to dominance. The Rams are coming out of their ninth straight losing season - the longest in the NFL.
Goff is no stranger pulling a team up from perpetual mediocrity. When he arrived in Berkeley, the Golden Bears were 3-9 and had not been in the AP Top 25 in six years. With Goff under center, the Bears improved steadily, capping off the signal caller’s career with a 55-36 win over Air Force in the Armed Forces Bowl.
The Novato, California native attended Marin Catholic High School, where he developed into one of the top QB prospects nationwide, throwing for a career 7,687 yards and 93 touchdowns while leading his team to 39 wins and four losses. The success continued in Berkeley, where Goff set 26 Cal records including records for career passing yards (12,220), passing yards per game (329.7 ypg), TD passes (96), completions (977), passing attempts (1,569), and total offense (12,086).
And he’s in good company: many of the records broken by Goff were those of another first round pick from Berkeley - Aaron Rodgers. It has been nearly impossible for Goff to avoid comparisons to the Green Bay quarterback, but the Rams’ new signal caller has many of the same qualities as the other poster child for Cal football: toughness, a calm demeanor, and willingness to stay in the pocket as chaos ensues all around. Both men are able to command their offenses, marching them down the field play by play, undeterred by what transpired on the last drive.
Only time will tell, however, if Goff can live up to expectations set not only by being a star quarterback from Cal Berkeley, but those set by being the first overall pick, drafted by a team that has just arrived to a massive and fickle market like Los Angeles.
I, for one, welcome our Ryan Gosling look-alike signal caller.
