If Sean McVay is really the catalyst behind Jared Goff's sudden improvement, then put him in the hunt for the coach of the year award.
Goff, last season, was mostly awful. He started seven games in his rookie year and lost them all. He threw more interceptions than touchdowns, as the Rams looked like a customer staring at a receipt after a bad meal. Did they choose the wrong quarterback with the No. 1 overall pick? The Eagles, dining at the adjacent table, took Carson Wentz with the No. 2 pick, and he went a respectable 7-9 while setting the rookie record with 379 completions.
So the Rams fired Jeff Fisher toward the end of a 4-12 season _ a miserable return to Los Angeles after 21 years in St. Louis _ and hired McVay, who had been the offensive coordinator for Washington. He worked some magic there with Kirk Cousins, a fourth-round pick in 2012.
And he's working some magic now with Goff.
Goff has five touchdown passes in three games _ not Canton-esque, but it does equal the number he had in 2016. The Rams are 2-1, which is two more wins than they had with him as a starter last year. He's not a weekly fantasy QB1 yet, but his 10.1 yards per attempt _ a popular metric for measuring quarterbacks _ is tops in the league. He's getting there.
"Whenever you have success, you're confident," Goff said. "The whole team is feeling pretty good right now. We're very grounded and understand that we need to get better, but we believe in each other."
McVay's offense even helped Todd Gurley run for 113 yards in Week 3, his first 100-yard game since his 2015 rookie season. Gurley was a fantasy bust last season, but with six total touchdowns in 2017, he has suddenly become fantasy gold, even if we are still in September.
The Rams will play at Dallas on Sunday in a matchup of second-year quarterbacks. His counterpart, Dak Prescott, was even better than Wentz and was the rookie of the year in 2016.
"We started off 3-1 last year," said Goff, who started the season sitting behind Case Keenum, "and you saw the way that went."
