LA Rams QB Jared Goff Working With Outside Coaches In Offseason

Sports Illustrated’s MMQB’s Albert Breer dropped a short nugget in a piece today about new San Francisco 49ers General Manager John Lynch noting that Los Angeles Rams franchise QB Jared Goff is working with a pair of quarterback coaching “gurus” this offseason:

I’m told Rams quarterback Jared Goff has hired and is already working with renowned coaches Adam Dedeaux and Tom House. Good sign, regarding Goff’s commitment.

Let’s take those two sentences separately because one is worth taking seriously. The other isn’t.

Goff working with Dedeaux, House

Who are Adam Dedeaux and Tom House? Two former baseball players who formed 3DQB, a quarterback-training company in Los Angeles.

The story goes like this.

House pitched in the majors for eight seasons in the 1970s before becoming a pitching coach with stints with the Houston Astros, San Diego Padres and Texas Rangers. He is perhaps known among non-baseball fans for his tangential role in the story of two Indian baseball players, a story made into the movie Million Dollar Arm. House also held the pitching coach gig at USC from 2008 to 2011 during which time he coached Dedeaux...the grandson of famed USC baseball coach Rod Dedeaux for whom USC’s baseball field is named...for whom House played in the 1960s at USC. Yeah, the loop closes that story up pretty well.

In 2011 after House’s retirement as a baseball coach, he began developing a system of tutelage for football quarterbacks. After taking on Tim Tebow as a client, House tapped Dedeaux to help out. The two formed 3DQB soon thereafter.

The roster the two have worked with is, no doubt, impressive:

To hear House discuss the nature of what he works on is complex...perhaps too complex:

The more football embraces science-based technology, the more gains they’re going to make. It could be biomechanics one year, it could be physical preparation another year, it could be physical recovery a third year. But in combination, there’s always room for improvement.

...

Right now I’m thought of as Weird Science. The payoff is probably not going to come with me, but with someone of my type further down the road.

In and of itself, it’s a relatively harmless nugget. And perhaps if anything, House and Dedeaux can only help Goff after a miserable (and that might be too nice) rookie season.

The question is how much it will help Goff in relation to how much his peers are improving at the same time given whatever they’re doing this offseason. In that regard, there’s every reason to be skeptical.

Working with the two is a “good sign of Goff’s commitment”

This is where Breer loses me, and where the MMQB style of reporting on the NFL often loses me in equating all efforts to some degree of permanent, positive progress. Goff could be working with anybody anywhere and it would be a “good sign of Goff’s commitment” just because it exists.

Last year, we saw similar reports about Rams LT Greg Robinson working with OL “guru” LeCharles Bentley. Those turned into reports that he was set to “dominate” in 2016.

Was Robinson’s work in the 2016 offseason a “good sign of [his] commitment”? How well did that translate to his on-field performance last year?

How many players across the NFL work with position coaches or “gurus” every offseason? Hell, take House and Dedeaux alone. Sure, you can point to New England Patriots QB Tom Brady or New Orleans Saints QB Drew Brees and lazily connect their on-field successes to House and Dedeaux. I could make the same weak argument in pointing at the struggles of other players they’ve worked with like Cleveland Browns QB Robert Griffin III, Jacksonville Jaguars QB Blake Bortles...and Los Angeles Rams QB Case Keenum.

In his 14 starts for the Rams across the 2015 and 2016 seasons, Case Keenum quarterbacked the worst offense in the NFL. I’m not sure why I’m supposed to be enthused a “good sign, regarding Goff’s commitment” that is entirely the same sign that Keenum enjoyed working with House and Dedeaux, the same sign that Robinson enjoyed working last offseason with Bentley and that no doubt hundreds of NFL players enjoy every offseason.

The Los Angeles Rams finished putting together their coaching staff for the 2017 season not long ago. They’ve got an offensively-schooled head coach, an offensive coordinator who comes out of the QB coaching ranks and a QB coach who was the Rams’ offensive coordinator a decade ago. I’m inclined to suggest they’ll have an overwhelmingly more substantial impact on Goff’s career let alone the details of his mechanics and technical acumen more than the offseason work of two coaches.

It’s worth noting that Goff is working with House and Dedeaux. Consider it noted.

But it’s also worth pointing out that those two alone won’t be able to turn Goff into a functional, successful NFL product. If that’s going to happen, it’s going to be a product of what happens once he rejoins his teammates and starts putting together the initial outline of how to execute the strategy that the Rams’ offensive coaching staff is going to put together for 2017.

Acting like Goff deserves some kind of plaudits for working with House and Dedeaux is silly. Ensuring those plaudits are delivered if the people the Rams are paying to turn him into a winning quarterback is all that matters.