Rams HC Sean McVay opens up on regrets of controversial Jared Goff trade to Lions: "I had some growing up to do"

In the 2021 offseason, the LA Rams traded quarterback Jared Goff, who was 26 at the time, to the Detroit Lions for 33-year-old Matthew Stafford in a move that left many astonished. The Rams seemingly felt they had a short championship window with their star-studded roster and needed a veteran quarterback to maximize it.

LA was vindicated as Stafford led the franchise to a Super Bowl win in his debut year. However, Sean McVay still feels guilty about how he and the team handled Goff's exit.

On Tuesday's "Fitz and Whit" podcast, he said (53:40):

"Jared Goff situation could have been handled better on my part, in terms of, you know, the clarity of the dialogue in the midst of that. And you never know which direction this is going to go."

McVay suggested that Goff was made the scapegoat for the Rams' underwhelming 2020 season, and he should have protected the quarterback from taking the brunt of the blame for the team's disappointing campaign.

"I had some growing up to do, could have done a better job for Jared,"McVay said. "There's a lot more respect and etiquette that he deserved in the way that that was handled on my end, that was poor on my part. And you want to make sure that you know, as you try to apply your you know, learning lessons from your mistakes, that you're at least trying to communicate with clarity."

While McVay seems remorseful about how he handled Goff's exit, he's glad that the quarterback is thriving in Detroit and is one of the primary reasons why the Lions have become a juggernaut.

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Sean McVay on Rams' QB conundrum

Four years after their infamous decision to trade Jared Goff, the Rams are now reportedly looking to move on from his replacement Matthew Stafford. The veteran quarterback is keen on playing in 2025 and beyond but the team is gearing up to field a new signal-caller next year. Sean McVay was asked about the reports and he said:

"There’s no discrepancy on us wanting him to continue to be our quarterback. The interesting and challenging dilemma and dynamics within this are, ‘Hey, how do you continuously as a head coach look at the short term and the long term and be able to figure out what does that really look like?’ There’s layers to it. You have to be able to say, ‘Hey, how do we continuously build? How do we support him? How do we make sure that he’s getting what is his worth relative to those things?’"

The head coach's admission suggests the team does not doubt his ability to bounce back from a difficult 2024 season. However, his $103 million cap hit over the next two years is not ideal considering the slew of stars on their roster who'll be extension-eligible over the next 24 months.