By most objective and subjective measures, the NFC North might be the toughest and most competitive division in the NFL right now. All four teams can make a legitimate playoff and even Super Bowl case.
However, regardless of how things fared last season, it's hard not to believe the Detroit Lions are, at the very least, the second-best team in the division. If anything, they've been the biggest contender for most of the Dan Campbell era, winning the pennant in two of the past three years.
That's why it's mind-boggling to hear that people still won't give Jared Goff his flowers. Notably, the disrespect may have reached a new peak when former NFL linebacker Bart Scott went as far as to name Kyler Murray as potentially the best quarterback in the division.
Lions' Jared Goff still doesn't get any respect in the NFC North
"I think the team that's going to surprise a lot of people is the Minnesota Vikings. I think Kyler Murray, that addition right there... arguably, at the end of this season, I think we may say that Kyler Murray is the best quarterback [in the NFC North]," Scott said on ESPN's Get Up.
We're talking about someone who was benched last season. Even when he was back to full strength, the Arizona Cardinals chose to roll with perennial backup Jacoby Brissett. Then, they paid him dozens of millions not to play for them anymore.
Of course, this isn't to say that Murray isn't a good quarterback. If anything, the NFC North is stacked with talent, and all four signal-callers could have an MVP-caliber campaign every year. That said, Goff has been, by far, the most consistent passer in the NFC North for years now, and watching him get overlooked and passed over in every ranking makes it feel personal.
Granted, Goff has fallen short in big moments, but he's come a long way since his days with the Los Angeles Rams. Still, even though Murray, Caleb Williams, and Jordan Love have also had their fair share of struggles, it feels like Goff is the only one who's being held accountable for that.
Since arriving in Detroit, Goff has completed 67.9 percent of his passes for 21,451 yards, 149 touchdowns and 47 interceptions, leading the team to a 48-33-1 record and four consecutive winning seasons.
Quarterbacks often get most of the credit and also most of the blame. That's fair to a degree, but the Lions wouldn't be the Super Bowl contender that they are without Goff, and they've won countless games because of him, not in spite of him. Still, he'll have to do plenty of heavy lifting to turn around the narrative once and for all.
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