Getty Matthew Stafford prior to a game.
The Detroit Lions have Matthew Stafford in the fold and that isn’t changing for the near future. It might be changing a few years into the distance, however.
Recently, ESPN took a look at ranking how married teams were to their starting quarterback, ranking every squad in the league 1-32. When it came to Detroit, the Lions placed down the list at No. 27, meaning they aren’t all that married to Stafford according to Dan Graziano.
As Graziano said, that doesn’t mean Stafford is going anywhere right now with the team, simply that he might not be a complete fixture for the Lions moving forward as the years go by.
Graziano wrote:
“The Lions are paying Stafford $15 million this year and nothing is guaranteed after that. In fact, as of the restructure Stafford did in December, $7.2 million of that $15 million is now an option bonus tied to a 2023 option on his contract, and the Lions have until the day before their first game of the 2020 regular season to decide whether to exercise it. If they don’t exercise it, that $7.2 million gets added to his 2020 salary, so he gets the $15 million either way. And the 2023 year voids no matter what, so this is just a salary-cap manipulation move.
What’s odd about it is the date on the option bonus. Since the Lions don’t have to decide on it until the day before their season starts, they could trade Stafford before then, and the acquiring team would be the one paying the option bonus and the salary.
Let me be clear: I do not believe the Lions are planning to trade Stafford. They’ve said they aren’t, publicly and privately, and I believe he will be their quarterback in 2020. But this is simply an exercise in ranking contract flexibility. And the fact the Lions have three more months to pay that bonus moves Stafford down just a bit behind others in his tier. Even if he does play the entire 2020 season for them, the Lions can get out of his deal next offseason with a $19 million dead-money charge and no more guaranteed salary owed.”
Indeed, next season would seem to be the tipping point for plenty of things within the organization, namely whether or not Bob Quinn and Matt Patricia stick around. The pressure could be on Stafford to perform too in order to justify sticking around on a big contract into the future.
It doesn’t seem as if it will happen, but if the Lions decide, they could move on from Stafford pretty easily in the coming offseasons.
Former Lions Defender Says Team Letting Matthew Stafford Down
Former defensive lineman Lawrence Jackson feels when it comes to quarterback Matthew Stafford, the team hasn’t exactly met him halfway. Jackson, who has been critical of the team in the past on social media, said that when it happened, he was merely speaking out of frustration for Matthew Stafford. Jackson says that such critiques of the team were out of love and frustration due to how things were handled with the quarterback.
I love Matthew Stafford and thinks he’s a HELLUVA QB. He’s one of the toughest, humblest, funniest guys that I know…
When I critiqued the Lions out of love…I thought they the Organization failed Matt. They stifled his potential and wasted the surrounding talent.
You’d be hard pressed to find a player who has done more for the franchise than Stafford has while being more humble, and it’s something his teammates like Jackson notice. It’s why most will step up to the plate to defend him and his abilities.
Clearly, Jackson’s comments were also meant to give Stafford credit as much as try to motivate the organization to do more in order to support them. It sounds as if the team wants to do that now, and the hope is the team can continue to build around Stafford so there won’t be more frustration like this to note in the future.
NFL Analyst Thinks Lions Troubles Not Matthew Stafford’s Fault
Recently, former NFL personnel man turned ESPN analyst Louis Riddick explained on Get Up why the Lions don’t need to be looking for a new quarterback in 2020, and the reason was because the team still hasn’t done enough to fully support Stafford in all the ways they can.
“You understand they haven’t put much around this young man at all. From 2011-2017, Matthew Stafford threw for over 4,000 yards every season. In 2011, he threw for 5,000 yards. He basically has carried this football team on his own with no help,” Riddick said. “They had no running game during this entire time. This is a team that has been in the bottom quarter of the league rushing the football because they just put it all on Matthew Stafford’s shoulders. And he delivered. He’s been a top 10 quarterback the entire time he’s been in the NFL. What has happened though is everything around him has been absolutely average to below average to mediocre. It’s been subpar. He’s gotten no help. No quarterback can transcend mediocrity when its surrounding him. Matthew Stafford has had to try and win and succeed in spite of dysfunction around him his entire career.”
As Riddick went on to explain, the Lions have tried to change course recently, but it hasn’t gone that well for them, only further proving his point.
“Finally, they started investing in the offensive line. They drafted Kerryon Johnson, he needs to stay healthy. They’ve become a little more balanced. They’ve done some decent things on the defensive side of the football, but it hasn’t been good enough,” he said. “The people around Matthew have failed him. Matthew hasn’t failed Detroit, the people around Matthew have failed Detroit.”
Safe to say that Riddick, who understands the inner-workings of the league well, is dropping some serious knowledge with this topic.
Matthew Stafford Named Potential 2020 NFL MVP by ESPN
That back injury ended up costing Stafford the rest of the 2019 season, but now that he has presumably healed up, the sky could be the limit for the quarterback during the 2020 season. In fact, some already see Stafford as being in the mix for a major award for his play during next season.
ESPN recently put together an Insider piece predicting some outcomes for the 2020 season. When it came to league MVP, there were scant votes for Stafford, but one insider was bold enough to say he thinks the Detroit quarterback could be the league MVP.
In a piece by MLive.com’s Benjamin Raven, the thoughts of ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler from the piece are presented. Here’s a look at what was written by Raven that Fowler shared in the piece:
“The Lions quarterback was playing some of the best ball of his career before going down with fractured bones in his back, though, and his level of play was reason enough for one ESPN analyst to pencil him in as the 2020 NFL MVP.
“Mahomes is still the game’s best player, but Stafford was playing really good football before his midseason back issues,” ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler writes (ESPN Insider). “If he leads Detroit to contention, which isn’t so farfetched considering the talent around him, he’ll be in the MVP mix because he puts up numbers and the NFC North is as open as Kenny Golladay.”
The Lions were arguably getting MVP level play out of Stafford before he got hurt, and the numbers proved that he was acclimating just fine to Darrell Bevell’s new offense in Detroit. Last season, Stafford was cruising along to the tune of 19 touchdowns, 5 interceptions and 2,499 yards. Clearly, he was the most valuable player for the Lions considering what happened to the team when he went down.
Stafford continues to do everything he can to win in spite of the hands he has been dealt during his career in Detroit. If he can do that in the future, he might continue to stick around. If not, it’s possible the team could always decide to move on eventually.
The contract could allow them to do just that in short order.
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