What does Carson Wentz deal mean for Jared Goff?

[Rampage]

The second pick in the 2016 draft has his long-term financial reward. The first pick in 2016 is still waiting for his.

With Eagles quarterback Carson Wentz signing a four-year, $128 million extension, what will Rams quarterback Jared Goff get? Perhaps more importantly, when will he get it?

Wentz and Goff are represented by the same agent (Ryan Tollner), and they had almost eye-dentical rookie deals. Indeed, with two years remaining on their initial contracts, Goff was due to make only $250,000 more than Wentz through 2020.

Unlike Wentz, Goff has stayed healthy for each of the last two seasons, engineering playoff appearances in 2017 and 2018. Unlike Wentz, Goff has taken his team to the Super Bowl.

Unlike Goff, Wentz was a short-list MVP candidate in 2017, before tearing an ACL in a December game against Goff’s Rams. Unlike Goff, the Eagles chose to keep Wentz and to let a Super Bowl MVP walk away in free agency. (In fairness to Goff, the Rams have had to make that choice.)

The real question with Goff ultimately isn’t whether the Rams will pay him more than what Wentz received, it’s whether the Rams are even willing to move into the same ballpark. Rams fans and some who cover the team believe that the Rams regard Goff as indispensable. There’s a chance, however, that coach Sean McVay views Goff as interchangeable.

How much of Goff’s performance over the past two years is because of Goff, and how much of it is because of McVay’s offense? Consider the comments made recently by failed former Jags starter Blake Bortles regarding the level of coaching he’s receiving in L.A. Maybe, just maybe, Goff’s play during the past two seasons has a lot to do with McVay.

If so, that means McVay could find cheaper quarterbacks who could be coached to Goff’s level, or quarterbacks who cost the same or more than Goff will cost but who can be coached to ever greater heights.

While it was indeed only one play, it’s hard not to wonder whether McVay has been able to get past Goff failing to anticipate, to see, and then to deliver timely and accurately a no-brainer touchdown pass to a wide-ass open Brandin Cooks with Super Bowl LIII still in the balance. Given that the Rams had used basically the same play earlier in the game, and given that Cooks had been wide-ass open the first time but Goff had missed him, it’s hard not to wonder how much time was spent during the extended Super Bowl halftime talking about the fact that they would try that one again, and that Goff’s first look would be Cooks. It’s hard not to wonder whether Goff was simply too freaked out by the moment to remember that coaching point, to process it all in real time, and to make a championship throw in a championship moment.

Only McVay and maybe a handful of others know the truth on this, but there’s a chance that McVay has realized a hard cap resides over what Goff can be expected to do when legacies are on the line. That would cause any coach to wonder whether there’s another quarterback out there who has a higher ceiling when the time comes to secure trophies.

Although Rams fans have every reason to rally around their current starting quarterback, Rams fans ultimately should want what’s best for the team. It could be that McVay decides, given what Tollner will want on a second deal for Goff, that the team’s best interests reside elsewhere.