Detroit Lions' Jared Goff not worried about INT-less streak: 'I'm just trying to win games'

Jared Goff swears he isn’t thinking about his interception-less streak, except when someone asks him about it. And as hard as he tried, the Detroit Lions quarterback couldn’t dodge questions about it Tuesday.

“You guys are talking about it way too much,” Goff said when the topic came up for a fourth time in his eight-minute media session. “I haven’t thought about it once.”

Goff has gone 359 straight pass attempts without a pick dating back to a Week 9 win over the Green Bay Packers last November, and his turnover-free play is a big reason the Lions have transformed into one of the best teams in the NFL.

He currently ranks third on the NFL’s all-time list of attempts without an interception, and he needs 44 turnover-free throws Sunday against the Seattle Seahawks to break Aaron Rodgers’ all-time record (402).

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Seven-time Super Bowl champion Tom Brady is the only other player with more consecutive passes without an interception (399).

“It’s cool,” Goff said of being in the same company as Rodgers and Brady. “It’s a cool thing to look back on it one day, but if you told me it kept going and we lost games, I don’t care. I’m just trying to win games and that being a part of that formula, sure, it’s helped, but it’s not, by any means, the focus.”

Lions coach Dan Campbell said Monday that Goff has made significant strides in his fundamentals, and that has played a big part in making him a more efficient quarterback.

He trusts his feet, gets through his progressions quicker than he did early in his career and has done a good job keeping the ball out of harm’s way.

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Goff, who struggled with turnovers during his five seasons with the Los Angeles Rams and early in his tenure with the Lions, said he’s found a balance that was tough to achieve as a young quarterback, a balance of being “careful with the football and not careless, but at the same time, being aggressive when the shots are there and making those plays that we have to make.”

“I think as you get older, you realize when the shot is there and when it’s not and I think that’s something that I’ve kind of learned as I’ve gone through the last handful of seasons,” Goff said. “Just cause the shot’s called, doesn’t mean it’s shot taken. But then also knowing when it’s there and pulling the trigger and making those tight windows close and finding that balance and as you get older, I think it’s something that you learn.”

Goff completed 22 of 35 passes for 253 yards in the Lions’ season-opening win over the Kansas City Chiefs. He ranked near the bottom of the league in aggressive throws, which measures throws into tight windows with a defensive back within 1 yard of the intended receiver, according to the NFL’s NextGen stats, but was tied for eighth in average completed air yards per throw.

“Elite,” Lions receiver Josh Reynolds said. “Cause even Week 1 you’re seeing quarterbacks throwing three, four picks a game, or even just one. It’s big. It can be the difference between a win and a loss, so for him to be able to do that, man, it’s underrated. A lot of people are not talking about it until it’s like, ‘All right, he’s stacked up eight weeks of not turning the ball over.’”

NFL quarterbacks combined to throw 25 interceptions in Week 1, with some of the game’s best passers — Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Trevor Lawrence and Tua Tagovailoa — tossing picks. Allen and Ryan Tannehill each threw three interceptions as their teams lost games.

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Reynolds said the Lions are conscious of Goff’s streak, but added, “It ain’t like we’re just sitting there looking at the stat book.”

“It’s something you can feel as games go,” he said. “It’s big for the team. Turnovers are one of the easiest ways to lose a game so not giving the ball up is always big.”

To Goff, that’s the bottom line.

Early in his career, he sometimes cost the Rams games because of his sloppy play. He had three straight seasons with double-digit interceptions in 2018-20 and had 23 turnovers in his first 22 games as a Lion.

More recently, his ball security keyed the Lions’ eight-wins-in-10-games streak to close last season and was crucial to last week’s upset of the Chiefs.

Goff said he considers his interception-less streak a team stat that’s a function of his skill players making plays, the protection he gets from the offensive line and the benefits derived from playing with a good defense.

“It’s been a lot of things,” he said. “Obviously, we’ve been playing well, taking care of the ball and then there’s a lot of luck in it. We have balls batted that hit the ground, that doesn’t always happen. So yeah there’s a lot of a few different things, but if I’m taking care of the ball, we usually win games, so I’ve got to keep doing that.”

Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.

Next up: Seahawks

Matchup: Lions (1-0) vs. Seattle (0-1).

Kickoff: 1 p.m. Sept. 17; Ford Field, Detroit.

TV/radio: Fox; WXYT-FM (97.1).

Line: Lions by 5½.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Jared Goff not worried about INT-less streak, 'just trying to win'