Fran Tarkenton Has Made Up His Mind On Jared Goff As An NFL Quarterback...After 4 Games

Watched Jared Goff play yesterday. I'm sure he's a great kid - but he isn't very good at quarterback. 1st round draft pick?!

— Francis Tarkenton (@Fran_Tarkenton) December 12, 2016

I think we can all agree that it's a little premature to be making any declarative statements about Jared Goff's potential. He's obviously had an excessively underwhelming start, but playing merely four games for a dysfunctional franchise under the watchful eye of a head coach who was one week of employment from historical incompetence does not a career make. As much as crotchety former players like to formulate stubborn, steadfast assessments based on ridiculously small sample sizes, it's impossible to say that Jared Goff didn't deserve to be a first round pick before the water has even dried behind his ears. That's why I am taking the opinion of a mildly hypocritical 'Hall Of Famer' that had a grand total of eight wins in his first three seasons in the NFL with a grain of salt, but I would like to tip my hat to the way he chose to express it. 

Nothing softens the blow of publicly saying that a professional football player sucks at his job quite like showering him with a completely baseless compliment first. I bet Jared Goff was pretty pissed that some senior citizen with a girl's name was out there questioning his ability on the gridiron until he saw that he also praised him for more than likely being a great kid without ever once meeting him. Now that I think about, if Fran Tarkenton was going to do something as silly as try to prognosticate the entire athletic future of a 22 year old kid with no more than 16 quarters worth of evidence then he should have went all out and really tested the bounds of the watering down strategy he used in this tweet.

In retrospect, something along the lines of "Jared Goff likely has a heart of gold, an aura so warm that it could melt every drop of snow off the Andes, and a sense of humor that could put a person awaiting the results of their HIV test at ease....but I wouldn't even trust that erratic fuck to toss the football around the backyard with my grandkids" would have been just as "accurate" and much more entertaining. It would be a little shocking to his followers, but saying "Jared Goff is probably packing a horse cock, but he doesn't have an ounce of fortitude in those testicles of his" would send the exact same message. Truth is, Fran Tarkenton has just as much basis to determine the penis size of the frst overall pick as he does to detetrmine the personality of the first overall pick, so it would really just be a more explicit version of the same sentiment.