The Rams didn’t trade two first-round picks and eat $24.7 million in dead money just for Matthew Stafford to lead them to the playoffs. That’s something Jared Goff did three times in his first four seasons under Sean McVay.
They acquired Stafford to make them a Super Bowl team – and that journey begins on Monday night against the Cardinals.
There’s plenty of pressure on a lot of individuals in the Rams’ building. McVay is feeling the pressure to win with his hand-picked quarterback. Les Snead, who constructed this star-studded roster, needs a deep playoff run to validate his aggressive pursuit of big-name players each year. But perhaps no one is under more pressure than Stafford tonight.
The deafening narrative surrounding Stafford is that he’s a productive quarterback who can’t win big games. He’s 0-3 in the playoffs and had never even won a division title prior to this season with the Rams.
It’s widely believed that he’s one of the best quarterbacks to never win a playoff game, which is backed up by his 323 career touchdown passes – more than any other quarterback in NFL history who has never won a postseason start.
Matthew Stafford has his sights set on earning his 1st career playoff win.
His 323 career TD passes are the most by any QB in NFL history that’s never won a postseason game. pic.twitter.com/4hFdYDvjCK
— ESPN Stats & Info (@ESPNStatsInfo) January 17, 2022
With the Rams hosting the Cardinals at SoFi Stadium, the door is wide open for Stafford to begin to quiet his critics. He won’t silence them with one playoff victory, but he can start shifting the narrative that he’s not a winner.
Stafford said he isn’t feeling more pressure to win in Los Angeles than he did in Detroit, but expectations have never been higher for the veteran quarterback than they are right now. All season, the Rams were viewed as Super Bowl contenders. That was never really the case with the Lions during his tenure in Detroit.
The Rams went all-in with Stafford and sacrificed not only cap space, but future draft assets – and extremely valuable ones, too. What will the feeling be in Los Angeles if Stafford can’t even accomplish what Goff did last year by getting the Rams to the divisional round?
There isn’t a soul who will call this season a success for the Rams if they lose to the Cardinals. A 12-5 regular season is nice, but success for a team built like the Rams is measured by postseason wins. This campaign will be viewed as a massive disappointment and failure if the Rams can’t even get out of the wild-card round by beating a team they were 8-0 against from 2017-2020.
Of course, not everything falls on the quarterback. Stafford might throw for 350 yards and four touchdowns, and the Rams could still lose if their defense can’t stop Kyler Murray and the Cardinals offense. He might play a clean, turnover-free game and Los Angeles might fail to get a defensive stop at the end.
But regardless of who’s to blame if the Rams lose, the narrative about Stafford will remain the same: he can’t win the big ones.
That’s why it’s so critical for him to play well in this game and finally get the monkey off his back by winning in the playoffs. His legacy isn’t riding on this one game, but unless the Rams beat the Cardinals, there will be questions about their blockbuster trade for Stafford and whether he’s the guy to get them over the hump.
Wins shouldn’t be a quarterback stat because football is the ultimate team sport. But at some point, Stafford has to prove himself in January if he wants to be considered one of the best quarterbacks of his generation.
