SAN FRANCISCO — At an age when most professional athletes are riding off into the sunset, Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford accomplished something for the first time in his career Thursday at the NFL Honors ceremony.
Seventeen years into one of the more remarkable quarterback runs in league history, the 37-year-old Stafford earned his first MVP award. He did so in a landslide vote, befitting the career year he just produced, throwing for a league-leading 4,707 yards and 46 touchdowns with eight interceptions.
The 46 touchdowns are a Rams record and the second most for a quarterback at age 37 or older.
He is the third player in league history to throw at least 45 touchdowns and have fewer than 10 interceptions in a season.
In the process, he led the Rams to a 12-5 record and the brink of another Super Bowl berth. The Seahawks denied Stafford and the Rams that opportunity, but the loss in the NFC Championship game doesn’t tarnish what Stafford accomplished this year.
The question now is, will Stafford use the award as his swan song and call it a career? Or will he use it as evidence of the incredible level of play he has established for himself and turn it into fuel for a run at another MVP award and possibly a Super Bowl championship for the Rams?
Stafford isn’t the oldest player to win an NFL MVP award. But he joins a very select company of quarterback greats who earned the honor this late in their careers.
Tom Brady became the oldest player to win the award at 40 years old in 2017. Aaron Rodgers earned the honor at 38 and 37 in 2021 and 2020, respectively.
Peyton Manning, Rich Gannon and Y.A. Tittle were each 37 when they won MVP awards in 2013, 2002 and 1963, respectively.
He did all of it despite missing most of training camp while recovering from an aggravated disc in his back — an injury that some speculated could cost him the season. And while wearing a Rams uniform that there were no guarantees he would don this time last year.
With Stafford and the club at a contract impasse last February, the Rams permitted Stafford to talk to other teams about a trade. That led to legitimate talks with the Raiders and Giants, both of whom offered Stafford a contract worth more than $100 million.
Stafford and the Rams ultimately agreed to a restructured contract, but the injury and near-trade factors made for one of the most unlikely starts to an MVP season in league history.
“There were some lean moments. It was touch-and-go there for a little bit,” Stafford said last month during the Rams’ playoff run.
Lengthy conversations with the Rams’ training staff, led by Reggie Scott, the senior vice president of sports medicine and performance, and Rams coach Sean McVay helped formulate a season-long plan to get Stafford through the season.
“And them just trying to figure out what’s best,” Stafford said. “A lot of treatments and things that I did to try and help myself get to this point. I didn’t know if I would get there, but I went out there and it was wait and see, let’s see what happens. Luckily, it turned out pretty good.”
Thursday’s honor continued one of the more unique career arcs in sports history — and proof of how many twists and turns some careers can take. That it occurred on the eve of Sam Darnold’s unlikely run to the Super Bowl, going from high-draft bust and castoff with the Jets and Panthers to one of the NFL’s best quarterbacks with the Seahawks, seems entirely appropriate.
Stafford was never considered a bust as much as he was unfortunate.
The top overall pick in the 2009 draft out of Georgia, Stafford had a right arm that seemed blessed by the football powers that be, a positional intellect that few possess at that point in their careers, and a body built for longevity.
Everything about him screamed home-run draft pick, destined to do great things.
Eighteen years later, it’s all come to fruition. Only with a massive delayed reaction, at least in terms of team goals.
Stafford had the misfortune of being drafted by the chronically bad Lions, as mediocre a franchise as any in sports.
Stafford was good to be sure, throwing for more than 4,000 yards seven times over his first 12 seasons and always ranking among the NFL’s best statistical quarterbacks. But he wasn’t good enough to overcome the Lions’ perennial habit of bad coaching hires, terrible drafts and poor leadership.
Year after year passed with Stafford doing everything humanly possible at quarterback, only to come up short game after game. Sure, there were the occasional winning seasons — four to be exact over his 12 years in Detroit. But the Lions were 74-90-1 during Stafford’s time under center, and you would find nary an NFL personnel executive who heaped any blame on Stafford.
In fact, there was mostly just pity that he was stuck in such a bad situation.
It also made Stafford reassess the praise and blame quarterbacks get if you simply base it on game results.
“I think quarterback wins are an interesting stat,” Stafford said recently. “It takes everybody. There are certain games where I don’t play up to par, but we win the game. Or certain games where I feel like I played really well, and we don’t win the game. It doesn’t always correlate with the quarterback.”
He is living proof that it takes a village to create a winning program.
“Obviously, I want to play as good as I possibly can, but I would equate that to our head coach leading the way and our team playing good football at the right time,” Stafford said.
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That was never more apparent during his time in Detroit or the five years he’s now been in Los Angeles after the Rams traded for him in 2020.
Stafford isn’t doing any more or less than what he did in Motown from a statistical perspective — aside from the career-high 46 TDs he threw for this year. He’s just doing what he does while being surrounded by better coaches and teammates.
“Surely, I’m doing my best part to try and play at a high level or lead the guys in the right way and find a way to win the football game,” Stafford said. “There’s no question about that, but I didn’t win those games by myself, and I didn’t lose any of them by myself. We play as a team. We win as a team, and we lose as a team.”
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: nypost.com
