Sean McVay admits regret about how he communicated news of trade to Jared Goff

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Jared Goff returns to Los Angeles this weekend as the starting quarterback of the Detroit Lions to face his former team, the Rams, for the first time since being traded this offseason.

Goff was sent to Detroit with a pair of first round draft picks as part of the compensation package that brought Matthew Stafford to the Rams in one of the offseason’s largest deals.

While McVay is pleased with the Rams having Stafford at quarterback this season, he does have some regret over how the trade came down and the way it was relayed to his former starting quarterback.

“Yes, I wish there was better, clearer communication,” McVay said Monday, via Lindsey Thiry of ESPN.com. “To say that it was perfectly handled on my end, I wouldn’t be totally accurate in that. I’ll never claim to be perfect, but I will try to learn from some things that I can do better, and I think that was one of them without a doubt.”

While the trade came together somewhat quickly with McVay and Stafford both vacationing in Cabo San Lucas at the same time, Goff didn’t realize something was in the works until he was informed he was heading to the Lions.

“You don’t want to catch guys off guard,” McVay said. “It came together a lot faster than anybody anticipated, but yeah, of course I think that any time that tough decisions and things like that where people are affected, you always want to be as understanding, as empathetic as possible, think about it through the other person’s lens and there’s certainly things that I know I would do it a little bit differently if — when those situations arise in the future.”