Mr Cool one step from glory

LA Rams quarterback Jared Goff has silenced the critics who savaged his early days in the NFL to make the Super Bowl.

Amalfunctioning headset forced Jared Goff to cover the earholes of his helmet. A deafening howl cascaded from every seat of the Superdome. The Los Angeles Rams trailed the New Orleans Saints by two scores early in the NFC championship game, and now, as Goff strained to hear the next play call inside the Rams huddle, the rest of the offense wouldn’t stop talking about the last play.

Team-mates had come to know Goff as an unfazed 24-year-old, a slightly goofy embodiment of California cool with a dry, biting sense of humour. As the Rams’ season neared sudden collapse, Goff looked at those team-mates – Pro Bowlers, hardened veterans, generally tough dudes – and pierced the chaos.

‘‘Shut the f . . . up!’’ Goff screamed.

The chatter stopped. Goff called the next play. By the end of the day, the Rams had gone to the Super Bowl, the culmination of Goff’s rapid ascent. Tomorrow, against the New England Patriots in Atlanta, Goff will become the youngest quarterback to play in a Super Bowl since Tom Brady in 2002.

Last Tuesday, Goff sat on a spotlighted stage at media night and made small talk with Patriots legend Brady, now 41, chatting about mutual acquaintances back in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The Super Bowl can awe any first-timer, but those who know him guarantee it will not overwhelm Goff, because nothing does. He never felt doubt during his rookie season, when he lost all seven starts he made and pundits labelled him a bust. He never wavered in the face of attendant expectations from being the first overall draft pick. And he never blinked when he needed to tell his team-mates to quit yapping.

‘‘It just kind of refocused everyone in,’’ right tackle Rob Havenstein said. ‘‘It was like, ‘When I’m in the huddle, it’s my huddle. If you miss it, it’s loud. You’re not going to hear it again.’ Nobody thought anything of it. It was OK, [shoot], you’re right. You’re the quarterback. You’re the leader of this team.’’

Goff possesses an arm both rocket-strong and precision-accurate, which helped him throw for 4688 yards and 32 touchdowns this season. ‘‘He throws into windows people aren’t supposed to be throwing it in,’’ tight-end Tyler Higbee said. His talent made him the No 1 pick, but his unruffled attitude launched a complete turnaround, from perceived draft disaster to Super Bowl quarterback in two years. Goff’s unflappable nature is his defining trait.

‘‘I’ve never seen him get rattled,’’ Rams quarterback coach Zac Taylor said. ‘‘The moment is never too big for him. He’s very intelligent. Hard worker. All the things you want in a starting quarterback, Jared is.’’

The Rams arrived at the Super Bowl on an infamous blown pass interference call, but the blatant mistake only mattered because Goff brought them back from being down 0-13. His headset went out moments before the opening drive. His 40-yard bomb to Brandin Cooks set up the Rams’ first touchdown. Two naked bootlegs in overtime, on which he made bullet throws under pressure, led to the game-winning points. Coach Sean McVay called the performance ‘‘a great representation of the mental toughness that he has.’’

Where, Goff was asked this week, does that come from?

‘‘I get that question a lot,’’ Goff said. ‘‘I don’t have a good answer for you, because I don’t know.’’

Tony Franklin, Goff’s offensive coordinator at the University of California, worried for his former quarterback after he watched one of Goff’s first NFL practices. Under coach Jeff Fisher, the Rams practiced without tempo and ran a staid, predictable offense that didn’t take into account Goff’s specific talents.

‘‘I knew the whole deal that first season was going to be whether or not he had a change of coaching,’’ Franklin said. ‘‘In my humble opinion, in that league, there’s been a whole lot of really good quarterbacks that were labelled busts because they had the wrong coach and they had the wrong management.’’

The season was miserable. Goff was not on the active roster to start the season, an unusual designation for the first overall pick. The Rams started 4-5, and after Fisher inserted Goff, they lost all seven games. He absorbed vicious hits behind a makeshift offensive line. ‘‘It wasn’t the best team for him to be on,’’ guard Rodger Saffold said. But when Goff called Franklin to catch up, he never badmouthed coaches or blamed team-mates. He just wanted to know how he could get better.

‘‘To be honest, I never lost confidence,’’ Goff said. ‘‘There were some tough times early on. I had good perspective on it, though. I knew it was only seven games. I didn’t play attention to what anyone was saying. I kept my head down, kept working, tried to be myself.’’

Goff’s resolve owed in part to experience. Overlooked as a high school recruit, Goff still won Cal’s starting quarterback job as an 18-year-old freshman. They had a brutal early schedule, and small problems snowballed until the season finished 1-11.

‘‘We were terrible,’’ Franklin said. ‘‘He probably weighed 170 pounds [77kg], and he was getting his brains beat out. He never changed. He always went to the sideline, always talked to the offensive linemen and the receivers, never blamed anybody but himself.’’

In high school, Goff had always been a star and his teams had always won. His freshman season at Cal served as a hinge. His father, Jerry Goff, constantly told him he should expect success and not act surprised when it came. At Cal, for the first time, Goff needed to prove he could remain similarly poised in the face of failure.

‘‘That made him who he is today,’’ said Jerry Goff. ‘‘He never experienced anything like that. To feel that sense of what it’s like to be bad is something that you need to know.

‘‘You can walk into a stadium in the fourth quarter, you wouldn’t know if he threw four touchdowns or four picks. It’s just the way he is. He doesn’t beat his chest running down the field, and he doesn’t drop his chin when he doesn’t play well. It’s a