Is Matthew Stafford being slept on … again?
It’s a question I asked in compiling the 2022 edition of my annual quarterback poll, and for the first time, it was turned on its head. In the past, Stafford popping up with votes to put him among top five quarterbacks in the NFL would represent a divide in how coaches and scouts saw him (favorably) vs. the general public. This time, the guys actually working for teams showed some like for Stafford, but not as much love for the Rams quarterback.
Yes, he has the elbow injury. And no Super Bowl champion has repeated since the Patriots won their second and third titles, nearly two decades ago, when Tom Brady was in his mid-20s. And sure, Stafford will be working with a new left tackle, a new No. 2 receiver and a new offensive coordinator.
Still, the fact that Stafford finished in this year’s poll, down from sixth last year, and with roughly half the voting support he got in 2021, was a little jarring as I tallied up the points.
So consider this a reminder to everyone of what coaches and scouts always used to remind me, when Stafford’s virtuoso play was hidden under the Lions’ mediocrity—the guy remains, in the words of Rams coach Sean McVay, a bad motherf—–. I think, so long as his right elbow holds up the way the Rams expect it to, he’ll prove it again over the next four months.
Here’s why I feel that way with the 2022 season dawning Thursday night as the Bills visit Stafford and the Rams at SoFi Stadium: The best place to look for reasoning is the most obvious place, and that’s the signature play of Super Bowl LVI. On second-and-7, with the Rams trailing 20–16 and at the Bengals 46 against a defense that had allowed just three points in the second half and 3:06 left, Stafford delivered a no-look throw to Cooper Kupp for 22 yards that’ll forever be etched in Super Bowl history.
The really cool part, though, was the reasoning for Stafford doing it—McVay later conceded to me it was a “s—-y play call.” The concept was designed to attack split-safety coverage and, after the snap, Bengals safety Vonn Bell dropped into the box, right where Stafford was supposed to go with the ball. In the moment, he had the wherewithal to move Bell with his eyes slightly to Bell’s left. Bell, for his part, actually did a good job of holding his ground while respecting where Stafford was looking, and was in position to play the ball.
But Stafford held Bell for just long enough, and generated just enough velocity on the ball to exploit a throwing window you could barely slide a credit card through to get it to Kupp.
And therein lies the real wow factor in what Stafford did. For all the oohs and ahs over the act of looking one way and throwing the ball the other, the intent behind it was far more impressive and rare—that Stafford recognized he was working against a stacked deck, identified where he was in trouble, fixed the problem by manipulating Bell with his eyes, and pulled off the physical feat he did is, well, a lot of work to get done in three seconds.
“The thing that is so unique, that you should mention about Matthew—he manipulates coverage with an intent behind everything,” McVay told me. “I think a lot of times people get excited about just no-looking something to no-look it. There’s an intent behind all of the stuff where he no-looks guys. He has such great ownership, he knows, . …
“So Vonn Bell was aligned in the location that play is designed to attack. It was not a very good play call for that coverage that [Bengals defensive coordinator] Lou [Anarumo] called. But Matthew was able to move him opposite of where he was originally lined up to open up the window based on his ability to manipulate and move coverage.”
Which is, folks, why it’s easy for me to buy into Stafford, again, in 2022.
Coaches will tell you that the difference between good and great quarterbacks in the NFL is the ability to win on third-and-long, to turn three points into seven in the red zone, and to play from behind. It’s winning on the margins, in a league where championships are won that way. It’s making a coach right, as McVay said, even when he’s wrong.
Stafford did that on the throw to Kupp, and the truth is he’s been doing these things—even if most people weren’t paying attention, as he’d routinely play in those 1 p.m. ET Fox broadcast windows for the Lions—for years.
Just this week, as I was putting the poll together, I was talking to a coach, one who’s never worked with Stafford, who raved about his ability to do just what he did on the throw to Kupp in the Super Bowl. And to bring that to life, he called up a play he remembered from the first quarter of Stafford’s third-to-last game as a Lion, a 46–25 Week 15 loss to the Titans, and FaceTimed me in to show me the coaches tape.
“This is some high-level s—,” he said.
These are the things that no one sees and, in this case, it’s not because it was another Lions loss in, yes, another 1 p.m. ET kickoff. It’s because it happened on a third-and-goal from the Tennessee 2-yard line in a game that wound up being a blowout. But there Stafford was, sitting in the pocket, looking right to hold Titans linebacker Rashaan Evans with his eyes, then firing the ball left, into a tiny opening down the middle just between Evans and All-Pro safety Kevin Byard, into the waiting arms of Marvin Jones for a game-tying touchdown.
Even the broadcast crew had no idea—they openly wondered if the Titans in coverage had simply lost track of Jones on the play, while the truth was Stafford was literally pulling those guys away from him.
The coach then excitedly pulled up another play to show me, this one from Week 4 in 2019, when Stafford, on a third-and-goal from the Chiefs’ 9, split no fewer than four defenders, blistering the ball past linebacker Damien Wilson and safety Tyrann Mathieu to its right, and linebacker Anthony Hitchens and safety Daniel Sorensen to its left, into the hands of Kenny Golladay for a touchdown that put the Lions up 23–20 late in the third quarter.
The Lions lost that one, too, but these are the things that had coaches, for so many years, asking “What if?” when it came to Stafford.
Last year, we got our answer to that, emphatically. And it feels like now, seven months after he proved so many people in the NFL right, those people who thought he might just be a modern-day Archie Manning as a Lion, we should be celebrating him a little more than we are.
Anyway, I can’t quite figure out why we’re not. On to the poll results …
