Lions QB Jared Goff, jilted by L.A. Rams, at home with Detroit - ESPN

REDONDO BEACH, Calif. — The label «laid-back California quarterback» follows Jared Goff everywhere and almost sounds like an insult, but true to form, he doesn't really care. He doesn't hate it at all.

Goff, the starting quarterback for the Detroit Lions, has wrapped up a spirited offseason July workout at his gym in Redondo Beach, capping it by schooling his trainer in a basketball game called «Pressure,» and now he's winding down with a home video on his phone.

He can't stop laughing at the clip, which is more than 20 years old and looks sort of like a 1990s sitcom. The video shows Goff's whole family in the yard after his first Pop Warner practice, and they're helping him with technique.

«Set, hut,» the long-legged 7-year-old boy says, and Goff's older sister, Lauren, snaps the ball through her legs. Goff had been thrown in with the linemen that first day, but his coach said if he could learn the reverse pivot by the next practice, he'd get a chance at playing quarterback. So his mom, Nancy, tells her children that Jared needs to get flustered with the playcall. She doesn't know then that it's impossible. Goff doesn't get flustered.

Not even now. Thursday night, Goff enters the most important season of his NFL career. His Lions are playing the reigning Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs in the 2023 NFL Kickoff game, and Detroit is a chic pick to win the NFC North and maybe even go to the Super Bowl. All of this is a big deal in a football-obsessed city that has not won a playoff game in more than three decades, and Goff will experience it while playing under a contract that expires after the end of next season.

But Goff says he feels no pressure.

«Not any more than I've experienced in my past,» he says. "… People