Cal Football: Keenan Allen and Jared Goff Win PFWA Awards

Former Cal Football players were awarded by the PFWA on Friday, winning Comeback Player of the Year and Most Improved Player.

On Friday, the PFWA (Pro Football Writers of America) handed out their year-end awards, and a pair of former Cal football stars found their names on that list. Los Angeles Chargers’ wide receiver Keenan Allen was named the Comeback Player of the Year, while Los Angeles Rams’ quarterback Jared Goff was named the year’s Most Improved Player.

Allen’s 2016 season was over almost as quickly as it started. He rocketed out of the gates, making six catches for 63 yards in the first half of the Chargers’ week one game against the Kansas City Chiefs, but he wouldn’t get a second half. In the final two minutes of the first half, Allen suffered a non-contact knee injury, resulting in a torn ACL that ended his season less than 30 minutes after it began.

He returned to the field for the 2017, and he did so in remarkable fashion. He played a full 16-game season for the first time in his NFL career, and put together a spectacular statistical season. He finished fourth in the NFL with 102 receptions, third in the league with 1,393 yards (blasting past his previous career-highs in both categories), and scored six touchdowns.

Allen also led the league with 36 third-down receptions, and became the first player in NFL history to record at least 10 catches, 100 yards, and a touchdown in three consecutive games.

The former Bear set a franchise record for receptions, surpassing the 100 catches that LaDainian Tomlinson made back in 2003. His yardage total is the second-most in Chargers’ lore, only behind Lance Alworth’s 1,602 yards in 1965 (he averaged over 23 yards per catch that year!). As for former Bears in the NFL, Allen’s 102 catches matched Tony Gonzalez’s total from 2004 for the most in a single season by a Cal alum. His 1,393 yards stands alone atop the list of former Bears, knocking Desean Jackson’s 1,332-yard performance from 2013 out of the number-one spot.

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Allen played at Cal from 2010 to 2012, and was one of the most prolific receivers in school history. He made 205 receptions, which still stands as a school record, for 2,570 yards (third-most in school history), and scored 17 touchdowns (eighth-most). The 2011 season was his best, when he made 98 catches for 1,343 yards, both second-most in a single season in school history.

He’s not the first former Bear to win the PFWA’s Comeback Player of the Year award. He joins Craig Morton, a Cal quarterback from 1962 to 1964, won in 1977 after revitalizing his career with the Denver Broncos as a 34-year-old. He led the Broncos to a 12-2 record, and to the Super Bowl for the first time in franchise history.

Goff was a large part of the Rams’ impressive and surprising turnaround, going from a long-time laughingstock to one of the NFC’s best teams in 2017. They won their first division title and enjoyed their first winning season since the 2003 season, and improved from the lowest-scoring team in 2016 to the highest-scoring team in 2017.

Goff’s numbers jumped across the board. He threw for nearly 4,000 yards (and would have reached it had he not sat out in week 17 with nothing to play for), and had a tremendous four-to-one touchdown-to-interception ratio. He threw 28 touchdowns to just seven picks.

He improved markedly in completion percentage (54.6 to 62.1), yards per game (155.6 to 253.6), yards per attempt (4.3 to 8.5), yards per completion (9.7 to 12.9, leading the NFL in 2017), touchdown percentage (2.4 to 5.9), interception percentage (3.4 to 1.5), and passer rating (63.6 to 100.5).

Most importantly, Goff’s record as a starter saw the biggest turnaround. As a rookie in 2016, the number-one overall pick was winless in seven starts, surrounded by one of the most hapless offenses the NFL could offer. With an improved group around him, and a competent head coach putting together a gameplan, Goff won 11 of his 15 starts in 2017.

Goff played for the Bears from 2013 to 2015, and set school records in just about every passing category. He threw for 12,200 yards while completing 977 of his 1,569 attempts, and hit for 96 touchdowns, setting the school’s benchmark in each category. He set single-season highs in 2015 by throwing for 4,719 yards (a Pac-12 record), 43 touchdowns (tied for a Pac-12 record), and 341 completions (which was surpassed by Davis Webb in 2016).

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Goff’s head coach, first-year man Sean McVay, was named the NFL’s Coach of the Year. At just 31 years old, McVay became the youngest head coach to lead his team to a playoff berth in NFL history.

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