Though the Detroit Lions said their plan was to play their starters in the first quarter, coach Dan Campbell decided midweek that he would rest quarterback Jared Goff for the preseason opener. He felt Goff was doing well enough in training camp, that he had little to prove, so risking injury wasn’t worth it.
“He played pretty well (in training camp), he was in a good place,” Campbell said. “So we said, ‘Well, if we’re going to put someone, maybe we should put Goff.'”
But when Goff heard the rest of the first-team offensive lineup would take on the Atlanta Falcons — including all five starting offensive linemen for the first time since last preseason — he marched into Campbell’s office and urged him to play.
“He came into my office and said, ‘I want to play,'” Campbell recalled. “And I said, ‘Well, you don’t play.’ He said, “Well, if they play, I play.” And I said, ‘Okay, you play.’
This decision paid off as the Lions’ offensive line kept Goff clean and the entire unit looked like the well-oiled machine we saw at camp. You start the game off with about as perfect a ride as one can reasonably expect. The Lions rushed 79 yards in just 10 games and capped the drive with a 9-yard touchdown run from D’Andre Swift. Goff went 3-of-4 for 47 yards, with his only incompletion a dropped pass from Jamaal Williams.
As well as impressing the fans in the stadium, Goff earned himself points of respect up front with his determination to start.
“I love that,” left tackle Taylor Decker said after the game. “You want your quarterback to go out there, he’s like, ‘When my boys are out there, I’ll go out there and kick it up and we’ll go right out on the field and score.’ And that’s what we did.”