Recent history bodes well for Matthew Stafford to keep playing at a high level

Los Angeles Rams QB Matthew Stafford is entering his age-36 season in the NFL, and we are all surely wondering how many solid years he has left. Well, based on recent history, Stafford might actually have multiple efficient years left before Father Time eventually catches up to him. There have been several high-profile QBs across the NFL who have retired in recent years.

All of them are from the same-ish era as Matthew Stafford. Those QBs we will dive more into include Matt Ryan, Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Ben Roethlisberger, and Philip Rivers. Each QB has a strong argument to make the Hall of Fame one day, and Stafford should as well.

I don't know about you, but I am extremely curious how much gas Stafford has left before he his "E."

So, what I did here was I looked at the last "good" year that the formerly mentioned QBs had, and wrote their age down. I average all of the ages out and got a surprisingly high number. Let's dive into this some more!

Recent history bodes well for Matthew Stafford to keep playing at a high level

• Matt Ryan (age 35, 2020) - 26 touchdowns, 11 interceptions, 93.3 passer rating

• Tom Brady (age 45, 2022) - 25 touchdowns, nine interceptions, 90.7 passer rating

• Drew Brees (age 41, 2020) - 24 touchdowns, six interceptions, 106.4 passer rating

• Ben Roethlisberger (age 38, 2020) - 33 touchdowns, 10 interceptions, 94.1 passer rating

• Philip Rivers (age 39, 2020) - 24 touchdowns, 11 interceptions, 97 passer rating

For each of these quarterbacks, their last "good" season, if you will, was either in their late-ish 30s or early 40s. Tom Brady was an alien, so of course, he played well at 45 years old, and Father Time caught up to Matt Ryan at age 35. Anyway, you get an average age of 39.6 years old from these five.

Well, if we average out their statistical production in these seasons, we'd get 26.4 touchdowns and 9.4 interceptions. Nothing from their final seasons really jumps off the page here. In 2023, Matthew Stafford tossed 24 touchdowns against 11 interceptions, which is just about in line with what these five passers averaged in their final efficient season.

Could Matthew Stafford keep this pace up for another four seasons? He is entering his age-36 season now, so through his age-39 season putting up these numbers could end up being a huge positive for the LA Rams, but that also does assume they'd want to keep him around for another several years. Now yes, each QB is different, but this begins to make sense when we have a significant sample size like this.