Is Jared Goff a trap in 2025 fantasy football leagues?

Jared Goff is coming off a massive 2024 season where he threw for over 4,600 yards and 37 touchdowns. Naturally, with all of his key skill players coming back, his average draft position has risen into the top 10 rounds of fantasy football drafts for 2025.

But is this level of performance sustainable, or are there some concerning signs that we should be aware of that could make him a potential trap?

Jared Goff was the perfect fit in Ben Johnson's scheme

Jared Goff averaged a sparkling 17.4 fantasy points per game over 55 career games with Ben Johnson as his offensive coordinator. That said, he's averaged just 15.7 fantasy points per game over 89 career games WITHOUT Johnson. Worse yet, Goff averaged just 14.2 fantasy points per game in 14 games in 2021 with Lions BEFORE Johnson became his OC.

Of course, the skill set of players now is better than what he had in 2021, so it would be a shock for any drop to be that precipitous. But he had a lot of talent on that Rams roster, including Cooper Kupp and Robert Woods in their primes, and he still did not reach the heights he had with Ben Johnson.

Ben Johnson has moved on to the division rival Chicago Bears, and new offensive coordinator John Morton is expected to install a modified scheme in 2025 - although it should be noted that John Morton did work under Ben Johnson & this Lions team for one season, back in 2022.

On top of that, the offensive line lost two key starters

The Lions were expecting to lose starting guard Kevin Zeitler in free agency (he has since signed with the Tennessee Titans), but the unexpected retiring of starting center Frank Ragnow has left a big hole in the interior of this offensive line.

Having a mobile quarterback behind an offensive line with this many changes can help mitigate it, but Jared Goff is, generally speaking, the opposite of that. The Lions will rely on a second-round rookie and a former sixth round pick at the guard spots, while last year's starting left guard, Graham Glasgow, moves over to center to fill the Frank Ragnow spot.

Goff's efficiency was extremely high last season - a trend or a statistical anomaly?

In 2024, Jared Goff set career highs in completion percentage (72.4%, his first season above 70% and over five percentage points above his previous high), yards per attempt (8.6) and air yards per attempt (8.96). On top of that, a larger amount of his yardage total came from after-the-catch yardage than ever before.

Given how massive the differences were in many of these categories, I tend to lean more on the fluky side, believing they'll be regressing to the mean this season given the changes above.

Jared Goff is still a fine QB2 with a solid floor - but I think drafting him at his ceiling is a trap

In my current Draft Dominator rankings, I have Jared Goff about a round behind his current ADP and as QB20 positionally. For context, Goff is going around QB13-16 in most drafts.

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