All week long, there were rumors of an impending Matthew Stafford trade coming down prior to Super Bowl 55.
All I saw was “my sources said”, “I”m hearing”, “the feeling around here is”, blah blah blah, in the end, it was all smoke and no fire. Almost nobody mentioned the one team that went all in on Stafford, the LA Rams.
Myself included, I never saw them as a possibility because of Jared Goff, but their name did come up in recent days as a possibility. On Saturday, it became a reality.
The Rams packaged up two future 1st round picks, a 2021 third round pick, and former No. 1 overall pick Jared Goff, and sent them to Detroit for Matthew Stafford.
It’s a crazy trade that in the immediate, drew reviews that the Rams got owned on the deal. I mean, how in the world, do you give up all of that draft capital, AND a 26-year old Jared Goff, a two-time Pro Bowl quarterback who is just three years removed from starting in the Super Bowl, to the Lions, for a soon to be 33-year old Matthew Stafford, the one-time Pro Bowl quarterback who has no playoff wins in 12-years with Detroit.
Time will tell who wins out on any trade, that’s a fact, however in the immediate, the trade does show that the Rams didn’t feel that Goff was the answer, and Stafford was too talented a quarterback to pass up at this moment.
Now you’re adding Stafford, who nearly tossed for over 4,000 yards while missing his number one wide receiver. In LA, Stafford will get Robert Woods and Cooper Kupp at wideouts, tight end Tyler Higbee, as well as a talented star in the making, in running back Cam Akers.
The Rams feel, no the Rams know that right now, they have a team good enough to compete for a championship. They have a top ranked defense and an offensive with more weapons than the two Super Bowl teams playing next Sunday, and yet, like 30 other NFL teams, they find themselves watching the big game instead of playing in it.
With Stafford, they feel they have a chance now. They’ve got a QB who can drive the ball downfield, a QB that opens up the entire field instead of only half a field, as ESPN’s Booger McFarland mentioned a couple of months ago:
Matthew Stafford was too much of a gun-slinger for the vanilla offense that Detroit ran, and Goff wasn’t enough for what Sean McVay wanted to run in LA, but no more, Sean McVay has his guy now, and he’s going to unleash him to the rest of the league.
If you’re a Rams fan, or just a football fan, it’s going to be awesome seeing what Stafford can do with a head coach like McVay, and a plethora of offensive weapons like the Rams have.
He’s not battling the Green Bay Packers and Aaron Rodgers anymore, now he’s going up in the almighty NFC West, who nearly had three teams make the playoffs this season.
It’s going to be tough, but it’s going to be fun. Matthew Stafford to the Rams is a good move for everybody.
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