Getty Sean McVay looks on during Rams camp practice in 2020.
Since he was traded to the Los Angeles Rams, the love-fest over former Detroit Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford has now reached a critical mass during the 2021 offseason.
First, it was everyone proclaiming the Rams had widely upgraded their quarterback position after dumping Jared Goff, who incidentally had taken the team to the Super Bowl just a few short years ago. Then, it was praising the Stafford trade as the one move that itself would put the Rams over the top in terms of claiming the championship in the 2021-2022 season.
For a while, it has seemed as if other legendary quarterbacks across the league just don’t exist anymore.
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Sean McVay outdid all of that previous hype with yet another interesting quote. When asked about Stafford, he lobbed some pretty over the top superlatives on his quarterback.
Rams head coach Sean McVay on his new QB, Matthew Stafford…
“Bro, this dude’s a bad MF-er. Whatever people say about him, as good as it can be, he’s even better than advertised….”
McVay’s been around the league so the idea that he didn’t know how good Stafford was or somehow found him to be better than good is laughable. Regardless, it’s just another piece of hype that has been thrown to the quarterback from his new franchise that should be generating eye-rolls for anyone without a dog in the fight.
Every team talks up their new players. Goff has been generating the same type of headlines in Detroit, but in this case, the Stafford love just seems way too over the top at this point in time, and is happening with greater frequency than anywhere else.
Why Stafford’s Hype With Rams Seems Overboard
Everyone understands Stafford is a great quarterback with a great opportunity ahead of him, but it’s almost as if nobody has been paying him any attention because he played for the Lions. Though he hasn’t won a playoff game or had any shred of success winning a division in his career, Stafford is amongst the strongest armed quarterbacks in the league. He’s also tough and is the kind of player that can carry a team by himself. That much is well-known.
All of this should also be understood by those in the NFL community. Listening to McVay carry on about Stafford with his glowing commentary is getting downright old, almost as if he is rubbing the league’s nose in what he thinks he has to prove a point. It’s taking on the feel of being forced along the way, and has a definite arrogant edge to it when combined with the coach’s comments about happiness and how they may or may not have related to Goff.
Everyone that has come into contact with Stafford understands what type of person and player he is. Detroiters listening to this simply have to be laughing. Many might still choose to root for Stafford, but his new coach and the situation he is in might also make it nearly impossible if this keeps up into the late-stages of the offseason.
Stafford Facing Major Pressure in 2021
All of this attention might only help to make things more difficult for Stafford in the 2021 season. In Detroit, the bar was very low. Stafford would have been seen as the savior had he been able to win an elusive NFC North title or even a playoff game. He was already labeled as heroic by some for statistical accomplishments with the team. All this talk about the Super Bowl, which just so happens to be in the Rams’ home of SoFi Stadium, is taking things to a whole other level. Stafford is being branded as this larger than life figure who simply cannot lose, when everyone who has paid attention knows that’s hardly been the case through the years. In that sense, he hasn’t even been battle tested in the playoffs let alone the Super Bowl. He’s human just like everyone else, something Stafford himself would probably admit.
Under the surface it will be a situation unlike the quarterback has ever seen in the league before. The honest hope for Stafford as a professional is the talk has not gone to his head and created a larger than life pressure-packed situation where he simply cannot live up to expectations due to all the endless hype. If it has, he might find life in Los Angeles to be even more difficult than being the face of a perennial loser.
That’s true no matter how “bad” Stafford might be in the best possible sense, of course.
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