Jeff Fisher sent Jared Goff hints via text Rams would take him No. 1

As the seconds before the NFL draft’s top pick ticked off in Microsoft Square, a sea of yellow and blue buzzing with two decades’ worth of anticipation for pro football settled into a quiet hum. Nearly 4,000 had come to wait for these final moments, for the promise of new quarterback for their new Rams, but at one end of the team’s draft party at L.A. Live, a bleak reminder of the past played over a giant screen.

One after another, a parade of forgotten Rams quarterbacks flashed across the NFL Network feed. Jamie Martin. Scott Covington. Chris Chandler. Trent Green. Kyle Boller. Keith Null. Brock Berlin. Kellen Clemens. Austin Davis. All started at least one game for the Rams since 2001, the last full season of Super Bowl MVP Kurt Waer’s career. All of them served as a bold-faced indication of how far teams can wander through a playoff-less desert without a capable quarterback.

But here, at the top of the draft, was the Rams’ oasis. After 12 years spent thirsting for the postseason, Jared Goff was their way out of that desert.

“Quarterback is a key ingredient if you want to contend consistently,” Rams general manager Les Snead said. “We ID’d Jared, and once we did, we had to figure out a way to go get him. This was the right thing to do at the right time for us.”

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The Rams had been sure weeks before now that Goff was the quarterback for which they long searched, worthy of mortgaging the future. They sent six picks (including two first-rounders) to make sure of that, forgoing more opportunities to build up a powerhouse defense or add a whole slew of weapons for a different quarterback. But with Goff, they’d seen the preteatural instincts. They drooled over his ridiculous efficiency rate in the red zone. They watched the pinpoint accuracy on outside throws and the calm dominance at the line of scrimmage, and they knew, for a taste of the quarterback success that so recently eluded them, it would all be worth it.

The excitement was at such a fever pitch that Rams coach Jeff Fisher couldn’t help but drop Goff hints via text in the days leading up to the draft. At the podium, he used words like “historic” and “monumental” to describe the franchise’s bold move.

“I am so excited,” Fisher said, smiling over his usual resting scowl. “You should have seen us in the room. We just drafted a franchise QB with first pick of draft. I’m trying to contain myself right now.”

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Whether Goff will breed that same excitement in a city that has gone 22 years without the NFL remains to be seen. Throughout the process, scouts and draft analysts were decidedly mixed on his outlook. Most agreed that his ceiling is lower than the other quarterbacks – such as Andrew Luck, Jameis Winston and Cam Newton – who have occupied the No. 1 spot in recent years. No one had labeled Goff, like those others, a sure thing.

Now, of course, all of that matters little. The trade, however lopsided it seemed, is done. The pick, however uncertain it might’ve been, is made. Goff will enter next week’s rookie mini-camp as the presumptive quarterback of the future, the face of a new franchise, and while Fisher and Snead assured that they’d limit the pressure that comes with that, there is no escaping the stakes or the scenery. Goff will be an immediate star in a city that treasures them, for better or worse. Fisher and Snead, meanwhile, will forever be tied to that star, even if, eventually, it falls back down to Earth.

This is the nature of the NFL, and, surely, a fate that Snead and Fisher have readily accepted. Both will get a few years to bring Goff along, without fear of losing their jobs. But when that third season comes along, the Rams, with their Pro Bowl ruing back and superior defense, need to be in position to contend. Anything less than that, after so many brushes with mediocrity, is unacceptable.

Given the amount of draft picks required to make the deal, the Rams’ future, quite simply, rests on Goff’s shoulders. It’s a vulnerable feeling that will no doubt set in, as Goff deals with the inevitable growing pains of Year 1 in the NFL and the questions roll in about how the team brings along its new franchise star.

But for today, there is hope. And you could feel it, amidst the yellow and blue at Microsoft Square, as the final quarterback in the Rams’ decades-long parade of failures flashed across the screen. The gathered crowd rose into a crescendo. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell approached the podium.

With him, he brought a new begiing. A new quarterback for a new team. An exit out of the desert.

Jared Goff’s face lit up the screen. The crowd burst into a frenzied applause.