LA Rams QB Matthew Stafford is good at fourth quarter heroics

Beyond the data

No amount of data analytics can truly prepare a fan for the appearance of a gun-slinger who throws first and asks questions later like quarterback Matthew Stafford. Yet, seeing him play for 16 games for the LA Rams, it’s plain to see why he was the chosen one from the organization’s perspective. What the front office does with the roster, he does on the football field. What the head coach designs in his playbook, he does on the football field.

Matthew Stafford is cut from the same high-stakes gambler cloth as Les Snead or Sean McVay.  On plays with an 87 percent certainty of gaining 10 yards on a pass play, or 44 percent certainty of gaining 45 yards on the same pass play, Stafford is slinging that pigskin downfield. Until now, I’ve openly challenged that mindset. But the guy is in his 13th NFL season. He is not changing anytime soon.

Stafford takes high stakes gambles

While it was clear that the teams of Stafford’s past were not exactly formidable defenses, nor blessed with overly successful running games, those data points seemed relatively unrelated to the performance of Matthew Stafford or the outcomes of the games with the Detroit Lions.

And yet now, at the end of the 2021 NFL season, it’s all beginning to make sense. The facts are somehow related. It’s a hodgepodge of contributing elements that all seem to be unrelated, but in the end, are ingredients for similar outcomes. Perhaps his past defenses were tasked with a similar challenge of trying to defend too much time of possession. Perhaps those same Detroit Lions defenses that could not protect the lead would have been able to do so if the offense had run the ball more often?

But now that we have Matthew Stafford, we have witnessed first-hand just how difficult it is for the head coach to take the football out of Matthew Stafford’s hands and place it into the hands of a running back. A running back can move the chains. A running back can even run valuable time off the clock. But Matthew Stafford makes things happen on the football field like no other player.