Following Sunday’s game in London, Matthew Stafford led the league in several major passing categories.
He also set an International Series record against the overmatched Jaguars.
And while Puka Nacua has gotten a lot of early season attention, Stafford is more than deserving of ample praise.
Has there ever been a more underrated, underappreciated NFL quarterback than Matthew Stafford?
If that strikes you as a fallacious statement, then consider:
Stafford, one of the most prolific passers in league history, has been named a Pro Bowler twice in his 17 seasons – and that’s an honor collectively determined by fans, players and coaches … i.e., damning evidence right there that he’s been grossly taken for granted.
He’s only received MVP votes one time in his career – and that was in 2023, not even the year he led the Los Angeles Rams to victory in Super Bowl 56 (Cooper Kupp, whom the Rams released earlier this year, was MVP of that game incidentally).
How many times have you heard “future Hall of Famer” attached to Stafford’s name? Perhaps it happens occasionally, but is he often associated with current and former peers like Aaron Rodgers, Drew Brees, Russell Wilson – each of them also only has one ring apiece FWIW – Ben Roethlisberger or Philip Rivers? It feels like Stafford has somehow been relegated to the Joe Flacco Zone for some reason – not that that’s all that bad …
And at a time when Tampa Bay Buccaneers star Baker Mayfield, something of an orphaned former No. 1 draft pick (like Stafford) himself for years, is getting all the league MVP love, Stafford’s basically gotten none to date.
That needs to change. Right now.
In case you missed Sunday morning’s appetizer, the league’s final contest in the United Kingdom this year, Stafford was surgical – on a very wet Wembley Stadium operating table while dissecting the Jacksonville-London Jaguars 35-7. After entering the day with 12 touchdown passes and a league-high 1,684 passing yards, Stafford threw for five more scores − an International Series single-game mark − and 182 yards.
“Do I get a sword or something?” Stafford cracked after his record-setting performance.
His 2025 passer rating of 109.3 is on track to be the best of his career. His 17 TD passes were three clear of the field entering Sunday’s 1 p.m. ET kickoff window and are especially sublime compared with the two picks he’s thrown this season. Now 5-2, Stafford’s Rams will end Week 7 with at least a share of first place in the NFC West and would have the same record as Mayfield’s Bucs if Tampa Bay fails to win at Detroit on Monday night.
Oh, and did we mention that Stafford didn’t have injured No. 1 receiver Puka Nacua, whose breakneck receiving numbers have drawn far more attention this season than the passer who’s providing them? Nacua sat Sunday with an ankle injury.
Did we mention that Stafford distributed his 21 completions to 10 different receivers? Two of his TD strikes went to rookies in Nacua’s absence.
Did we mention that he carved up a Jags defense that was allowing just 20 points per game entering Sunday (tied for seventh-fewest in the league) but surrendered more than that (21) to LA before halftime?
Did we mention that Stafford, 37, and the rest of his teammates, who’d practiced all week in Baltimore, managed this blowout despite setting foot on European soil basically 24 hours before kickoff – the shortest amount of time a team had ever been in country prior to playing a game in London?
‘I believe that Baker Mayfield is the MVP front-runner. But I also believe that Matthew Stafford is sending the Bat Signal out to the rest of the league,’ said former Pro Bowl defensive lineman and current NFL Network analyst Gerald McCoy on Sunday.
‘Matthew Stafford has climbed up the ranks. … Matthew Stafford is lighting the league up right now.’
And it’s not like all of us shouldn’t have known better.
A year after Tom Brady (somehow) burnished his reputation by leading the Bucs to a Super Bowl victory while capping his first year in Tampa, Stafford matched him by doing the same with the Rams – vanquishing TB12 in the 2021 playoffs en route. If it didn’t necessarily rewrite his personal narrative, it did help spark a wave of more high-profile quarterback trades (Rodgers, Wilson, Deshaun Watson) that didn’t approach the bar set by Brady and Stafford.
The Rams reached the postseason in three of Stafford’s four years in Los Angeles. They were the only team that threatened the juggernaut Philadelphia Eagles, who otherwise steamrolled their 2024 playoff opponents on the way to winning Super Bowl 59, Stafford superb on a snowy day at Lincoln Financial Field in January – and while he and his teammates were coping with the disastrous LA wildfires in their personal lives.
Stafford’s value should have been readily apparent over the summer given all the handwringing over the back injury that cost him a good portion of training camp − and should have been a reminder that he’s as indispensable to his team as Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen or Lamar Jackson are to theirs.
And if you’re inclined to hold Stafford’s largely fruitless 12 years with the Lions against him, maybe you shouldn’t be. He never played for Dan Campbell – though he did elevate the Rams in a manner his predecessor and replacement in Detroit, Jared Goff, couldn’t quite manage to do. Yet the fact that Stafford led the pre-Campbell Lions to three postseason appearances should actually be another bullet point on his Canton résumé. Detroit appeared to be a team on the rise early in his career, when he played with Hall of Famer Calvin Johnson and Ndamukong Suh. But Suh left after the 2014 season, Johnson retired a year later … and remind me who was helping Stafford during his final five years in Motown? Yet ask Megatron or Nate Burleson or Golden Tate, among Stafford’s wideouts in Detroit, and they’ll all tell you he’s been elite for the duration of his career – he just didn’t get the credit while exiled with the perpetually undermanned Lions.
Now here we are, 229 games into Stafford’s career. He’s still low-key elite, even if he’s not talked about with Mahomes, Jackson or Allen. His beard may be gray, but Stafford’s whip of a right arm still has as much zip as ever, able to launch seeds from myriad angles. Maybe he’s entered his personal Brett Favre era, deciding on a year-to-year basis whether or not he’s got another season in him – but he’s got more than enough to continue outwitting defenders with no-look passes, rocket balls or simple game management.
What’s more valuable than that on a Rams team that had won as many games as any other by Sunday afternoon? Good question.
