Jared Goff is not spending the holidays on his couch watching bowl games.
This year, Cal’s junior standout quarterback is busy, as he and the California football team are preparing for the Lockheed Martin Armed Forces Bowl against Air Force. Goff was a major contributor in the Golden Bears reaching their first bowl game since 2011, and he wants nothing more than to get Cal it’s 11th bowl victory in school history.
Since first joining the program in January of 2013, Goff and the rest of the Bears have worked tirelessly to get to the postseason. After a 1-11 season in 2013, and coming up one win shy of being bowl eligible in 2014, Goff and the Bears are enjoying every bit of the bowl experience in 2015.
“It’s exciting and it’s nice to have these extra few weeks with everybody,” Goff said. “For the last few years, we’ve been at home watching these bowl games on TV. You don’t want to be watching bowl games on TV. You want to be out there practicing and preparing to play in one. We’re all relieved we won’t be on our couches this year.”
While a bowl game has alluded Goff the past couple years, individual success has not. He owns 26 Cal records and was a contender for countless national honors during the 2015 season, including the Heisman Trophy, the Davey O’Brien National Quarterback Award, the Manning Award and the Maxwell Award, to name a few.
Goff is flattered when his records are discussed, but it’s not at the top of his list of things he cares about most. All he cares about is improving his abilities to make the team better.
“That’s exciting, and I’ll look back on that later down the road and enjoy that, but I couldn’t tell you what they all are,” Goff said about the records he’s set. “It’s a product of our offense and having so many good players around me. I’ve just tried to do my best every year.
“I really want to leave this program in a better place than when I got here. When we were 1-11, we were getting blown out in every game. I didn’t know how to win a game at the college level yet. This year, we were in it in every game. There’s something to be said for that.”
Goff has enjoyed this journey with much of the same personnel throughout his first three seasons at Cal, and one of those has been his offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Tony Franklin.
Franklin has noticed Goff’s improvement, not just on the field, but also with becoming more and more of a leader for the Bears.
“He cares deeply about this program because he grew up here,” Franklin said. “He was a fan, and he knew it was an important part of history for him to bring us back to where the Cal fans could be proud. It was a big deal to him.”
Following Cal’s 1-11 season, Franklin said Goff had a choice. He could either pout or get down on himself, or he could get back to work and continue to improve.
The choice was easy for Goff.
“I’m proud that I won’t have any regrets about anything I did out here because every single day I have tried to improve,” he said. "From practice to spring ball to summer, I tried to get better every day.”
The 2013 and 2014 seasons were good learning experiences for Goff, as he learned how to lead and win football games, according to Franklin. Having a full offseason following 2013 as the leader of the offense allowed Goff to be more comfortable in a leadership position, along with improved abilities on the field, and he became a better leader as a result.
If you ask Goff, though, while he’s happy with how much he’s improved through three years, he’s not patting himself on the back. Ever the modest player, Goff simply says that there’s always more he can do to continue to improve.
The Bears were so close to getting back in the bowl scene in 2014, but all it did was inspire them to work even harder for the 2015 season. After jumping out to a 5-0 start, Cal finally got over the postseason hump in the 10th game of the campaign with a victory over Oregon State. After the win over the Beavers, Goff finally had a chance to exhale and celebrate with his teammates.
But the win over the Beavers wasn’t Goff’s favorite moment of the 2015 regular season. The 21-point comeback victory in the regular-season finale over Arizona State was a moment that Goff said he will never forget.
“At home, a night game, cold, everything was going wrong, making that comeback was so much fun,” Goff said. “The Washington State game in 2014 will also never leave me. There are a bunch of games that were a lot of fun, but those two will always stick out.”
Hopefully Goff will remember the Lockheed Armed Forces Bowl fondly. Franklin is happy that Goff and the rest of the Bears will finally get a chance to play in a postseason game.
“He’s a good young man,” Franklin said about Goff. “He deserves it, and I’m happy for him as I’m happy for everybody on this team. It’s fun to see him get to this point of his career to where he can look back and be satisfied that he helped us get to this next stage as we continue to improve.”
