Is QB Matthew Stafford the LA Rams long-term solution?

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. – Lt. Commander Montgomery Scott, Star Trek. We’ve been told that the Rams have their quarterback of the future before. We’ve seen the LA Rams go all-in on a player multiple times.  And we’ve seen the Rams just as suddenly change their minds, wiping that playoff off the roster and a bevy of valuable NFL Draft picks in the process. And then, there’s all that dead salary cap that lingers to remind the Rams not to do it again.

But they do. And they will.

The LA Rams go all in every year. But somehow, there is a feeling that I cannot shake that this year may be different. The team made a blockbuster trade for a borderline Top-Five quarterback, Matthew Stafford. The team traded a third-round pick in 2021, two first-round picks in both 2022 and 2023, and of course, former starting quarterback Jared Goff who has an NFL record of 43-21. The team is known for going all in the past few years but this year may be completely different.

And yet, here we are where another off-season goes by and the team has no first-round pick in this upcoming draft.  That hasn’t handicapped the Rams as much as you might think because the team has drafted pretty well under the GM Les Snead / HC Sean McVay regime. So the team upgraded the quarterback positions, as the only way a team can win a Super Bowl is if the quarterback plays pretty well for an entire season.

The team lost their former defensive coordinator Brad Staley and a few free agents from the defense, and the team is still Super Bowl ready. Can new quarterback Matthew Stafford lead the team to the promised land? If not, where does the team’s future lie at the quarterback position if he doesn’t?

The Rams need Stafford to do something he hasn’t done yet in his career, win playoff games. The team won three postseason games under the leadership of Jared Goff and it’s not much of a hot take to say that Stafford is a more talented quarterback than Goff.  How will Stafford handle the playoffs? Will he wilt under the pressure? He’s never been put in this position before.

Honestly,  we have no idea if he can do it. With QB Jared Goff, the LA Rams laid a decent blueprint and were only ten points away from beating The New England Patriots, head coach Bill Belichick, and quarterback Tom Brady.

If Matthew Stafford doesn’t succeed with the LA Rams, it’ll be devastating for a team that is a quarterback away from winning the Super Bowl. The team has expressed an interest in keeping Stafford long-term but we have yet to see what he can do when the pressure is on. He wasn’t in the best situation with the Detroit Lions but he’s now arguably on a team ready to knock on the door of winning it all in the NFL.  No stage is bigger, as SoFi Stadium the biggest and premier stadium in the United States and NFL. We will see this season.