LA Rams Matthew Stafford: Are we having fun yet?

The Morning After

I came upon a video podcast by Kelly Stafford, entitled The Morning After with Kelly Stafford. I’m not if she did anything remotely similar during her time in Detroit, as this is a new discovery for me. Intrigued as to what I might find there, I clicked play and sat back to enjoy what new information or insights I might gather.

I learned that Kelly Stafford’s video is unique, as she recreated the events and experiences of her NFL game day for her fans. She walks you through her entire pre-game rainbow of emotions, the sights, and smells of SoFi Stadium from her first visit. She talked about the emotions of cheering for her husband who, after 12 seasons with the Detroit Lions, is suddenly back to square one with relearning a brand new offense in a brand new city and for a brand new team.

The video started out a bit slow for me. It was about tailgating and persons she knew. But it became much more interesting for me when she described the sight of watching Matthew Stafford quarterback run out of the tunnel (starting at the 3:05 mark in the video below). “Like a kid again”, “It was brand new”, ” “it was gonna be fun”.

She talked about the fact that he converted a turnover by the Rams defense into a touchdown to LA Rams wide receiver Van Jefferson in just over a minute.

But the key reason for this video occurs at the 5:10 mark, where Kelly Stafford describes her husband as:

"“He (Matthew Stafford) looked like he was having so much fun. Which, I haven’t seen that side of Matthew for a very long time… The whole experience yesterday (Sept. 12th) was awesome.” – Per Kelly Stafford describing her observations of her husband in his first game with the LA Rams"

When a wife notices her husband having fun as noted in the above video, that’s significant. Not only about what it says about Matthew Stafford’s experience in winning with the LA Rams, but in his lack of joy beforehand. This is no indictment against the Detroit Lions but in the sport itself. We know that competition comes with wins and losses. But true competitors enjoy the journey, the sport of competition, the game of football. But when the joy returns?  Well, let’s get to that in the next slide…