LA Rams Goff-Stafford trade: Way too soon winners and losers
By Jay Blucher
Who should love this deal?
Quarterback Matthew Stafford should love it. After all, he went from a rebuilding team to a returning to the playoffs team. And there is a tall bit of evidence to suggest that Stafford is far better than his Lions’ career stats would lead one to believe.
LA Rams fans should love it, particularly those who have very vocal about the shortcomings of quarterback Jared Goff. While the two quarterbacks are similar in stature and both are rather immobile pocket passers, Stafford offers a few new wrinkles to the offense he works in.
We’ve done our jurisprudence. A month ago, I went into a Consumer Report mindset to form an opinion on this deal. No bias. No preconceived notions. The evidence is clear. Stafford does expand the ceiling and the versatility of the Rams offense. That is not to say that the Detroit Lions are now cursed to an NFL record of 0-17. Rather, they will have the time, and certainly, the draft picks, to build an offense of custom design to feature the strength of quarterback Jared Goff.
We have gone even further. We reached out to Zebra Technologies, the company that has given the technical support to the NFL to establish Next Gen Stats, and had our own custom-designed direct comparison of Stafford to Goff. No one else has gone to these lengths to remain nearly as impartial on the topic. And we gave you the results of that analysis in this article.