NOVATO — Someone ought to warn Jared Goff’s future neighbors in Los Angeles about his celebrations. After some Cal road victories, the quarterback would get home at 3 a.m., crank up the music and order his slumbering roommates to come join the fun.
After home games, it was a live show: Goff was known to invite the entire Cal marching band into the living room.
“They’d come into the house, Jared would hop onto the table. We would all hop on to chairs. And they would fill our whole room,” Bears receiver Raymond Hudson said.
“We’d open all the windows and they’d just start playing the fight song right there.”
That cymbal-crashing clamor was the exception on Goff’s otherwise stealthy path toward the NFL Draft. The LA Rams’ No. 1 pick rose so quietly that as recently as a few months ago it was possible to envision him slipping to the 49ers at No. 7.
No more. The kid from Marin County is expected to go Hollywood on Thursday. The Rams traded a bounty to the Tennessee Titans to move up from the No. 15 spot and could make Goff the first Cal player taken first overall since Steve Bartkowski in 1975.
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Goff’s quiet ascent began right here in the Bay Area, on a peaceful tree-lined stretch in Novato, where his parents are almost sheepish about the hype suddenly surrounding their son.
Jerry and Nancy Goff, trading “can-you-believe-this?” glances from their oversized leather couch, say Jared’s football career actually began with a step in the wrong direction. His first youth league coach let players choose their position so Jared, age 7, jogged over to join the linemen.
Jerry, a former big league catcher, rarely interfered with his son’s path, but this case demanded an exception. Dad tracked down an assistant coach and said: “How about if he tries out at quarterback?”
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For that, football is eternally grateful.
SON OF ‘ROBOCOP’
About the only lingering draft knocks on Goff revolve around physical size: thin frame, small hands. There was no such debate surrounding Jerry Goff when he broke in as a rookie with the Montreal Expos in 1990.
“I remember a mountain of a man with just a cannon behind the plate,” said Mike Aldrete, the A’s third base coach, who was on that Expos team. “It doesn’t surprise me at all that he bred a young stud with a chance to be a high pick in the NFL.”
Jerry Goff was 6-foot-3, 205 pounds as a player, but he was so strong and stoic that teammates nicknamed after a cinematic cyborg.
“He had the ‘RoboCop’ look without all the armor,” Aldrete said. “It was just his physique.”
“He had that body shape: narrow waist and a pretty well-defined upper body,” said another former Expo, Mark Gardner, the Giants bullpen coach. “He also had that slow gait of a walk. We meant (RoboCop) as a compliment.”
Jerry grew up as a star athlete at San Rafael High and then at Cal, but his major league highlights are fleeting. In the majors, he batted .215 with seven home runs and 19 RBIs over 90 career games.
Instead, he has moments: Goff got his first major league hit off Rick Reuschel at Candlestick Park. Will Clark, who recognized the moment, made sure Jerry got the souvenir baseball. As he recounts the story, Jerry picks up that ball in a memorabilia room rapidly making way for Jared’s stuff, too.
Jerry played alongside an 18-year-old Ken Griffey in Class A ball. He caught a young prospect named Pedro Martinez in winter ball.
But mostly baseball taught him perseverance and humility. Jerry Goff spent 937 career games in the minors, making so many bush league bus rides that “I’m not sure Jared knows every stop I made along the way.”
The father’s career forged a rare opportunity for mentorship. Here was an ex-jock who had tasted just enough of the majors to prepare his son for the big-time and just enough of the minors to prepare him for frustration.
“I think you could count on a few fingers the little mistakes, the times when he was a little too hard on (Jared),” said Nancy, his high school sweetheart and wife of 28 years. “It wasn’t that horror story of a dad who’s been there and pushes his kid to get there because he did it.”
It helped that Jared inherited Jerry’s athletic gifts while the anxiety gene apparently skipped a generation.
Jerry, now a firefighter in Burlingame, said:
“He’s a completely different athlete than I was. I was really Type A. Everything had to be in order. If I missed a workout, it was the end. I had to make sure I crossed off every ‘t’ and dotted every ‘i.’
“Jared — even though there’s intensity to him — was a lot more relaxed. If he were to strike out with the bases loaded, sure, he’d be mad. But he wouldn’t take it the way I took it.
“Or if he threw a pick, he was able to rebound. That was the amazing thing to me.”
Goff’s ability to stay cool is among the things scouts love. He ranked second in the nation last season with 12 touchdown passes under pressure, according to Pro Football Focus.
PFF’s scouting report also includes phrases such as “Makes incredible throws with defenders bearing down on him. Fearless in the pocket … Processes information quickly, zips through progressions … Makes big plays under duress.”
Nancy Goff could have told them that years ago.
“What I remember the most was just how much fun he had playing. He was smiling and just loved anything with a ball. Anything,” she said.
“When he was really little — like, 5 — when they still did co-ed soccer, he would mow girls down. Not meaning to!” she said with a laugh. “We were like, ‘Jared, you can’t do that!’”
ESTABLISHING HIS PATH
Remember how Dad rescued Jared from life as youth league lineman? It only worked because the kid did his part, too.
His youth league coach already had a quarterback in mind so he agreed to let Jared try out only if he could master a footwork fundamental known as the reverse pivot.
“We got home and he said, ‘We’re doing the reverse pivot!’” Jerry recalled. “So we sat in the backyard and he did the reverse pivot for about 2 hours. And we came back the next day and he’s been a quarterback ever since.”
By the time Goff reached Marin Catholic High, coach Mazi Moayed knew what he had.
So he implemented a spread offense that would maximize Goff’s ability to get the ball out quickly. And he eventually rejected Goff’s pleas to do grunt-work on the scout team.
“We were afraid of someone falling on him and him getting hurt,” Moayed cracked. “And I’d be known as the worst coach in America.”
Instead, Marin Catholic went 39-4 over Goff’s three varsity seasons. He threw 93 touchdowns against just 18 interceptions and distinguished himself by keeping every player involved.
“He could make the average guy look really good,” Moayed said, “and make the good guy look really great.”
There were a only a few times when Goff looked really bad. One of them was against powerhouse Cardinal Newman (Santa Rosa) in 2012, when the quarterback opened the game with two interceptions over his first five throws.
In the blink of an eye, Marin Catholic trailed a playoff game 17-0. Nancy Goff remembers Jared responding by running along the sidelines and telling teammates: “Hang with me! We’re going to win this game!”
Then he directed four unanswered touchdowns in the second half to win 42-37.
“He has all the intangibles,” Moayed said. “You’d see him in the stands at basketball games and he’d be leading the cheers in the crowd.
“He’s just a magnet kind of guy. It’s like, ‘I want to be around this guy. I want to go to battle with this guy.’”
FROM 1-11 TO NO. 1
Sonny Dykes, the head coach of Cal, didn’t recruit Goff. He inherited him from predecessor Jeff Tedford, who was fired after 11 seasons just as the quarterback was ready to report for duty.
So how did Dykes rejoice upon seeing this prized incoming freshman for the first time? With Champagne? Confetti?
It more like a yawn. He put on Goff’s game tapes and shrugged.
“We thought he was a good high school football player,” Dykes recalled, “(but) just from the film, he didn’t look elite.”
That changed after Tony Franklin got to watch Goff play in person. That’s when Cal’s offensive coordinator got to see the way the quarterback responded to coaching, handled mistakes and carried himself among the older players.
“He came back and said, ‘Hey, look, this is one of the best high school quarterbacks I’ve ever seen,”’ Dykes said.
“He saw what kind of leader he was and the way he handled the good and bad. All those are things that make you a really good quarterback.”
The coaches handed the reins to Goff right away, in 2013, making him the first freshman to start the opener since at least World War II.
That’s when Goff got the type of painful lessons his dad used to get while hitting .190 at Bellingham. The Bears went 1-11, with their lone victory coming over Portland State.
It was tough on fans. It was torture for Mom.
“Oh, it was so scary at first just watching him take those hits,” Nancy said. “Just watching them lose week after week after week was hard.
“But it was really fun to watch the progression — and particularly, for me, Jared’s maturity through all that.”
By the time he was done, Goff broke 26 career records at Cal, including passing yards (12,220), passing yards per game (329.7), touchdown passes (96) and total offense.
In college, as in high school, the quarterback knew when to go from serious to light-hearted. Goff could ball, and then unabashedly show off his inner goofball.
“I just remember when we were younger, he came into the locker room and put on a little music — probably Taylor Swift or some country song,” Hudson, the receiver, recalled.
“Everybody is silent, just looking at him. And he was just dancing around the locker room. Day One, no awkwardness, no nervousness. That’s just how he is.”
GIVE HIM A HAND?
The rifle arm comes from Dad. The ability to defuse idiotic questions about small hands clearly comes from Mom.
“That wit might be from me,” Nancy said as Jerry nodded enthusiastically on the couch. “I’ll take credit for the wit.”
Their favorite example: Goff’s hands measured in at just over 9 inches at the scouting combine in February, prompting some small-hand wringing about whether his mitts could secure the football well enough in the NFL.
Measured again at Cal’s pro day in April, Goff somehow added one-eighth of an inch, prompting him to crack: “They got me a new measuring tape that’s made for small-handed people.”
His parents heard that line and beamed.
“I would have been super defensive about it,” Jerry said.
“He would have been super defensive about it,” Nancy agreed. “But Jared kind of turns it around and deflates it. He’s pretty good about not taking criticism personally.”
Goff’s small hands might be headed for one of the biggest possible stages.
As Cris Collinsworth wrote in predicting the Rams’ top pick: “They’re selling tickets, luxury boxes, energy. They’re not going to be able to go 1-15 while they develop a quarterback, they’re going to need to win games now, and Goff lets them do that.”
In Marin County and Berkeley, meanwhile, they’re getting ready to strike up the band.
“It’s a big deal,” said Jesse Foppert, the former Giants pitcher and Goff’s one-time baseball coach at Marin Catholic. “Everybody’s talking about it. Everyone is paying attention to all the mock drafts.”
Jerry Goff’s own sports background helped his son navigate much of this journey. But he admits he’s helpless for what to expect Thursday at Auditorium Theater in Chicago.
“No, I’m not going to be prepared,” he said. “I think it’s like getting married. You think you’re ready. But when the doors open and your future wife appears? You’re not ready for that.”
Staff writer Andrew Baggarly contributed to this report.
