At the end of the day, Jared Goff was really never given a fair shot to prove himself in 2016. Anyone who understands the basics of football knows that he was set up to fail.

Goff got few if any reps with the first-team in preseason and then only earned his first start in Week 11 once the Rams’ season was essentially lost. Then his head coach was fired, and whatever semblance of identity that the team had evaporated.

Throw in a very weak offensive line and one of the league’s shallowest receiving corps and you have a situation that almost no quarterback could thrive in, let alone a rookie.

So realistically, there’s not much that Rams GM Les Snead can say at this point to defend or celebrate Goff’s role on the team or in the league. It’s all up to what happens in the regular season. However he gave it his best shot during his appearance on Colin Cowherd’s FS1 radio show on Wednesday.

"Last season bothered him, but it didn't affect him." — @RamsNFL GM, Les Snead says they're behind Jared Goff for the long haul pic.twitter.com/vgPDoEdlog — Herd w/Colin Cowherd (@TheHerd) July 26, 2017

“Right now he’s still 22 years old. Let’s take Dak [Prescott] and Carson [Wentz] — they’re 24 years old,” said Snead. “He’s right now, of the 32 teams’ guys listed number one at QB, you know he’s the only 22-year-old listed as a starting QB. So we drafted him for the long term. And what I do like about Jared is, last year bother him but didn’t affect him. What I mean by that is he didn’t go in a hole, he didn’t lose confidence.”

Goff’s youth is worth pointing out, although the argument is nullified to some extent by the fact that current starters – including Jameis Winston, Matthew Stafford, Ben Roethlisberger, Alex Smith Marcus Mariota and Cam Newton – were all either 21 or 22 during their rookie seasons as well.

Related Jared Goff was by far the most pressured QB on third downs in 2016

Snead went on to point out that clearly, based on his performance in a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe in June, he hadn’t been wasting his free time by practicing his golf swing. He also commended him for the kind of effort he’s put in with his new coach and the system in place.

“When we did interview Sean McVay [and once we knew he’d get a second interview] we picked up the phone, called Jared [and said] ‘hey are you in town, where you at, are you close?’ He was definitely close, came right down, Sean and him had a good conversation. “I tell that story in that, since that last game, he hasn’t take many vacation, has’t gotten better at gold, tried his best to get better at football. And I think we’ve seen that through the new offensive system through OTAs and now we’ve got to go through training camp and obviously the games will speak for themselves.”

Again, it won’t be until the season is in full swing that we’ll really get a chance to see what Goff can do with all the benefit of knowing he’s the go-to starter.