His father was a fireman and, in a way, Jared Goff is one too. Consider his career as a quarterback. Time after time, he has gone into a bad situation and ultimately made it better, extinguishing the wrong kind of fire and eventually igniting the right one. “It’s not the most fun way to do it, I guess,” Goff told the Los Angeles Times in a phone interview this week. “Everyone would love to go and just win, win, win. But it’s a very rewarding and fulfilling way to go about it.
’ ” That turned out to be a shrewd decision, even though it took patience for coach Dan Campbell and the Lions to stick with Goff through the early turbulence while the foundation was being poured for the ground-up rebuild. The lanky and laid-back Goff, a California kid out of Central Casting, initially seemed like a mismatch for the hard-edged grit of Detroit. Much of that was based on superficial appearances. The middle of the country wasn’t an unfamiliar place for the family.