ESPN's Dan Orlovsky speaks with Athlon Sports' Doug Farrar about how Sean McVay asked him to teach Jared Goff how to watch tape back in 2017.
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00This is a fascinating thing, and I want to dive deeper into this.
00:02You mentioned yesterday on X that in 2017, Sean McVay hired you to basically teach Jared Goff how to watch tape.
00:11Your last season was 2015 in the NFL, so you've been out of the league for a year.
00:14How did that come about?
00:15How did Sean get in touch with you, and what was that process?
00:18How do you teach a college quarterback how to watch NFL tape?
00:22Because that just fascinated me.
00:23Yeah, so my last season was 2016.
00:25I got done playing fall of 2016 in Detroit.
00:302017, and I'm kind of in limbo.
00:32My contract was up.
00:33I get a call that spring, 2017, from Sean McVay.
00:37Sometime, let's call it May.
00:38And he's like, hey, are you retiring or whatnot?
00:40And I'm like, I don't know, Sean.
00:41He's like, listen, I'm taking the Rams job.
00:44I got the Rams job.
00:45I got this really young, talented player, Jared Goff.
00:48He doesn't know how to study tape.
00:50And I want you to come.
00:52You're going to be our third quarterback.
00:54You're not going to do anything in training camp, Dan.
00:55I just need you to teach him how to study tape.
00:58Teach him how to study tape.
00:59Teach him about defense.
01:00So I was like, all right, great.
01:01And this isn't a knock on Jared at all.
01:03Jared will tell you this straight up.
01:05So I go out there.
01:06And every day, I would go to, we would study tape in the meeting rooms, all that.
01:11I would then go to Jared's house.
01:14And he spent money.
01:16Because Jared wanted to learn.
01:17He spent money and time.
01:18He built himself a film study room, a place to study tape.
01:21And I started with him the way that I was fortunate enough to get taught because I got taught from, like, Gary Kubiak and Greg Knapp and Matt LaFleur and Kyle Shanahan of, like, how to truly study tape.
01:32I really actually, Doug started in high school and college because it was a mandate because I was lesser talented.
01:36And I remember these are honest to God stories.
01:41Jared will tell you them.
01:42I remember early days with Jared, like, my starting point would be like, all right, Jared, we're in an under front.
01:51And he would give me a look.
01:53And I would be, like, internally going, okay, all right, Jared, if we get an over front.
01:59And he would give me a look.
02:01And to my, at my, that point, I realized, like, do you know what over and under front are?
02:07And he's like, no.
02:10So he didn't even know the number one pick in the NFL draft what an over or under front was.
02:16I learned that in high school.
02:17And like you said, by the way, as you said, it's not a knock on Caleb.
02:20It's not a knock on Jared either.
02:21It's just not what you're taught.
02:23No, because in Jared in college, they were running, you know, spread, running gun, fire, fire away, you know, chuck and duck.
02:30And so, you know, that was, like, the eye-opening thing for me was, like, oh, okay.
02:34And now, again, one of my things was, and I feel this is probably the same way about a Caleb or whoever.
02:42It wasn't that Jared was dumb.
02:44He wasn't taught.
02:45Right.
02:45He was uneducated in that.
02:47And so we had to spend so much time, Jared, learning defensive fronts.
02:53And then how those defensive fronts were attached to linebacker alignment and how that linebacker alignment was attached to secondary alignment and then different coverages.
03:03And so he had to, like, play big-time catch-up.
03:06I also think it's one of the reasons why, you know, Jared's early years remember the stories of the no huddle.
03:11And Sean would tell him, kind of speaking to his helmet, what was going to be, you know, the situation defensively.
03:18So, yeah, that was—
03:19Well, that Super Bowl against the Patriots where they changed the calls after they knew how—when the game clock, they had to switch it off.
03:25And McCourty said we would flip the play then, and it kind of made his head explode.
03:29Yeah, you know, so it's like, you know, that was the perfect example of, oh, yeah, he just—now Jared runs the show in Detroit.
03:38Like, he's in control of everything.
03:39It just takes a lot of time.
03:40And so for everyone that's going—now, do I like the fact that—and I don't know, like, did Caleb say anything?
03:46Did Caleb just go along with it?
03:48Did Caleb beg for help?
03:50I have no idea.
03:51And I would imagine that's in Seth's book, but, you know, I don't know how much Caleb searched out the help.
03:59You know, I'm assuming the reporting is accurate, but—
04:02I think it's hard to do that when you don't know from day to day who your offensive coordinator is because they have three of them.
04:08And what you don't know.
04:09And what you don't know.
04:11Like, you don't know.
04:12And I would be surprised if, you know, Caleb, because of the style of offense that he came from—and this is sometimes why we talk about this with these draft pick quarterbacks—
04:21you know, how much of it can they control?
04:24How much of it can they handle?
04:25How much of it do they know?
04:26And so—but the fact that he wasn't getting that, that is, like, a remarkable malpractice by the Bears' staff last year.