Jared Goff has been there. He’s seen a team go from bad to good in a hurry. So even as the Lions lost six of their first seven, even as Dan Campbell’s record dipped to an unsightly 4-19-1 over his first 24 games as Detroit’s coach, and even as the defense struggled to get its footing and the offense went up and down, Goff could scroll back in his mental Rolodex to find optimism.
The quarterback has been on good teams. The Lions, even at 1–6, were close to being one.
That idea, of course, might have been a tougher sell on some players—mostly those who’d been in Detroit long enough to get that Here we go again feeling—than others. But even so, it persisted with all the guys who were punching the clock for Campbell. And eventually, that belief would actually amount to something, even if no one outside could see that coming.
