Jared Goff has now played 51 games in his NFL career, including playoffs. And his last 16 games have not been pretty:

Putting aside the fumbles (which is an enormous issue for Goff), let’s just look at his passing stats. I calculated Goff’s Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt (which is his passing yards (net of sacks) plus 20 yards for every TD pass and minus 45 yards for every interception, divided by his pass attempts plus sacks) for every game in his career. I then calculated his Relative ANY/A to league average for that season for each game, too.

The graph below shows Goff’s Relative ANY/A in each game, along with his trailing 16-game Relative ANY/A average. I have also color-coded his playoff games, and highlighted a few notable games.

Under Jeff Fisher (and John Fassel), Goff had a disastrous rookie season; then, under Sean McVay, Goff produced the single largest year-over-year ANY/A increase in NFL history.  The first year-and-a-half under McVay was outstanding: Goff  averaged 8.16 ANY/A through his first 27 games with McVay, producing a Relative ANY/A of +2.08.  That’s the output of a top-5 quarterback in the NFL.

And then, the 2018 bye week hit, and Goff hasn’t been the same since.  Statistically, it was a poor game but not an awful one: still, there was a feeling around the league that the Lions defense exposed Goff in that game.  But the next week, on Sunday Night Football against the Bears, the bottom fell out.  That was 16 games ago, and including that Chicago loss, Goff is averaging just 5.75 ANY/A over his last 16 games, a -0.57 RANY/A.

Quarterbacks sometimes have bad stretches, even the best of them.  As I’ve written before, Aaron Rodgers has had his share of trouble, and he average 5.51 ANY/A over a stretch from 2015 to 2016.  But Goff hasn’t quite earned the benefit of doubt to the same extent as Rodgers.  It was easy to dismiss the Fisher era numbers and say Goff was a top quarterback when he was performing like a star quarterback a year ago.  But now, one can squint and view the start of the McVay era as the outlier, surrounded by bad performances on both sides.

And there is no one stat to look at to understand where Goff is failing.  Over his first 27 games with McVay, he completed 64.0% of his passes; over his last 17 games (starting with the Lions game), he has completed 59.1%.  Over the first 17 games, he had 55 TDs and 13 INTs; since then, he has 18 TDs and 17 INTs.   He had 14 fumbles in those first 27 games, and 17 fumbles in his last 17 games. His yards per completion, perhaps always inflated by YAC, has dropped from 13.2 to 11.8.  About the only area where has improved is in his sack rate, which has gone from 5.4% to 4.5% as his offensive line has deteriorated.  This might sound counter intuitive, unless you follow our friend Adam Harstad on Twitter (which you should).

What do you make of Goff’s sudden collapse?