Lions' Jared Goff - Chip will 'never leave me' from Rams trade - ESPN

ALLEN PARK, Mich. — For quarterback Jared Goff, the past is the past.

Neither he nor members of the Detroit Lions are trying to make Sunday's NFC wild-card playoff game against Goff's former team, the Los Angeles Rams, led by his former coach Sean McVay, into an individual contest.

«We win as a team,» Lions coach Dan Campbell said. «Man, this is about the Lions versus the Rams, and we win with three phases here and he's a huge part of that and all he's got to do is do his part and he knows that.»

But that chip from being traded is still there, according to the veteran Lions quarterback.

«Of course,» Goff told ESPN. «I think it'll never leave me, and I think that's a good thing.»

In 2021, the Rams traded Goff, a 2021 third-round pick, a 2022 first-round choice and a 2023 first-round selection to Detroit in exchange for quarterback Matthew Stafford.

Although Goff admitted that things fell apart in Los Angeles after he started in Super Bowl LII, he still has an appreciation for McVay — and Stafford — as the Lions prepare to host their first home playoff since the 1993 wild-card matchup against the Green Bay Packers, back when they still played at the Pontiac Silverdome instead of Ford Field.

«Obviously, we had our differences there at the end, but he's a great coach,» Goff said of McVay. «He's a guy that taught me a lot.»

McVay said Wednesday that he acknowledges now that Goff «deserved better» than how his exit from Los Angeles was handled.

«The thing that I'll never run away from are mistakes that I've made in previous instances. But when you look back on it, the gratitude for those four years, all the good memories that we had. And then when you end up making a change, that ended up being difficult. And could it have