Matthew Stafford is entering his 13th season in the NFL. He’s made the playoffs just three times in his career and has yet to win a single postseason game. Despite being a highly productive quarterback who’s averaged 273.4 yards per game and has 282 career touchdowns in 165 games, Stafford’s only finished above .500 four times in the NFL.
That should change in 2021 when he suits up for the Los Angeles Rams, who have finished 9-7 or better in each of their four years under Sean McVay and have reached the playoffs three times since 2017.
Stafford is now in a perfect situation in L.A. with an offensive-minded coach, a strong running game and a defense that projects to be one of the best in the league again. The NFC West will be no cakewalk, but Stafford and the Rams are legitimate Super Bowl contenders.
And that has the veteran QB excited. In an interview with Sam Farmer of the L.A. Times, Stafford said it’s been a long time since he was this excited heading into a season.
“It’s been a while. We had some good teams in Detroit, and I’m excited every single year because I love playing this game. But those years we made the playoffs (2011, ’14 and ’16), I thought we had good teams,” he said. “But I’m very excited about playing for this team, the Rams organization. I’m excited about trying to get to know these guys. To win as consistently as the Rams have won in the last four or five years, you’ve got to have good people. You can’t just have good players and good coaches. It’s a really fun thing for me to be a part of, just trying to immerse myself in the team.”
Stafford has been through coaching changes, scheme changes and roster overhauls during his career, and because of that, he’s learned a lot. His intelligence and awareness at the quarterback position are two things that drew McVay and the Rams to him this offseason, which should make this a perfect pairing.
He’s looking forward to still improving with the Rams and learning from the likes of McVay, Aaron Donald and Andrew Whitworth.
“Throughout my 12 years in Detroit I learned a ton, both about success and also about failure, how to keep coming back and deal with it,” he said. “It’s a learning process every step of the way. I’m learning how to apply sunblock here in L.A. and what that’s like again. But I know I’ll learn a bunch here from a really smart coach and some players that have done it at a high level. Getting to be around the Aaron Donalds and Andrew Whitworths of the world is pretty fun for me.”
