Matthew Stafford never won a playoff game in his 12 seasons in Detroit. But the best quarterback the franchise has had in the Super Bowl era knows he was close in 2014.
That was the year the Lions lost in Dallas to the Cowboys as a wild-card team in a game mired in controversy. The officials erroneously picked up a pass interference flag thrown against the Cowboys defense late in the game that effectively ended any chance for the Lions to win, despite the play clearly being guilty of a foul.
Stafford reflected on the 2014 team in his wide-ranging, excellent interview with Mitch Albom. The excerpt from the discussion should resonate with Lions fans who are still upset with the bad call ruining the best team Stafford had.
“I think in 2014, when we went to Dallas for the playoffs. That was probably the most complete team I’ve been on, to be honest,” Stafford told Albom via the Free Press. “I didn’t think we were good enough on offense. I thought we were good enough on defense. We were really good on defense that year. And it wasn’t that we didn’t have the players on offense, because we had great players. We just didn’t click, you know, when we needed to. We didn’t play at a high enough clip on offense and it came back to get us.”
Stafford brought up the other playoff teams in Detroit he played on, 2011 and 2016, but he returned to the 2014 team in conclusion,
“But I think 2014 was definitely the team that was most complete top to bottom, player-wise.”
In that fateful season, Stafford earned his first Pro Bowl berth. He threw for 4,257 yards and 22 TDs, with 11 INTs. Golden Tate (1,331) and Calvin Johnson (1,077) each topped 1,000 receiving yards. Glover Quin and Ndamukong Suh each earned Pro Bowl berths from a defensive unit that finished third in total defense and second in scoring defense.
But it just wasn’t meant to be.
