Matthew Stafford, Rams prepare to face Detroit Lions in wild-card game
THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. — Los Angeles Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford is trying to keep this week as normal as possible.
Good luck with that.
Stafford will return to Detroit on Sunday night, as the city hosts its first playoff game in three decades, for the 10-7 Rams’ wild-card game against the 12-5 Lions.
Detroit drafted Stafford with the No. 1 pick in 2009, and he quarterbacked the Lions for the next 12 seasons before the Rams traded for him in 2021. Stafford played in three road playoff games, all losses, while with the Lions but led the Rams to a championship the same year he was traded.
Wednesday, he was asked what type of reception he expected from the Detroit fan base.
“I’m not expecting anything, to be honest with you,” said Stafford. “I was asked this question a couple of times just by friends and family. I think the biggest thing for me is (to) go experience whatever that experience is gonna be.
“I understand what the people of Detroit and what the city of Detroit meant to me and my time, my career, what they meant to my family. I hope they feel that back. At the same time, I’m not a stranger to the situation and understanding that I’m the bad guy coming to town. I’m on the other team, and they don’t want success for me.”
Stafford and his wife, Kelly, have four young daughters who were all born in Detroit while he played for the Lions.
“It’s an amazing city. It’s an amazing group of fans,” said Stafford. “The organization does a heck of a job. I know that they are going to be excited. It’s going to be a great atmosphere, probably one of the best we have played in in a long time. It’s a group of people that, from my experience, love the Lions. Wanted what was best for them. And now they’re playing really good football, they have an opportunity to host a playoff game. They’ve earned that opportunity.
“It’s going to be a cool experience for those people. … It’ll be a tough place to play. It’ll be loud. It’ll be tough for us to communicate as an offense, and we understand that.”
The Rams are practicing on their silent cadence all week, even during walkthroughs. The booming thuds of their outdoor speakers carry through the walls of their practice facilities.
“You know it’s going to be a great atmosphere and environment,” said Rams coach Sean McVay on Wednesday, “so that’s absolutely something that we’re gonna be working on all week and we gotta be able to handle that.”
What McVay is less concerned about, he said, is Stafford’s ability to manage his emotional state heading into a game that is setting up like a Hollywood script.
“I think it would be not being a human being to not feel a lot of different emotions,” said McVay, “but he’s put our team in a position to go play a meaningful game. He’s got a history there. I think it’s real to feel those types of things. But once you get into the game, let’s be totally immersed in the moment (and) we’ve got a lot of confidence in him. I want him to just be able to cut it loose and be able to play with his teammates.”
Sunday’s game is rich with Rams/Lions connections beyond Stafford and the city where he spent 12 years.
Lions general manager Brad Holmes and assistant GM Ray Agnew both worked under Rams GM Les Snead in Los Angeles. Rams defensive backs coach Aubrey Pleasant coached for a short while for Detroit. Receiver Josh Reynolds and long snapper Jake McQuaide are former Rams.
And of course, Jared Goff — who the Rams drafted with their No. 1 pick in 2016, and sent to Detroit via the same trade that brought them Stafford — is the Lions’ quarterback.
Goff and McVay’s deteriorated working relationship and his exit from Los Angeles are now a notorious piece of both player and coach’s history.
Goff helped lead the Rams to a Super Bowl appearance during the 2018 season, in his second year working with McVay.
McVay felt he needed to move in a different direction after an underwhelming 2020 season with a team he believed was ready to get back to the Super Bowl, and pushed hard to trade for Stafford while Goff was packaged unceremoniously into the transaction.
“The thing that I’ll never run away from are mistakes that I’ve made in previous instances,” said McVay of the more personal aspects of the trade. “When you look back on it, the gratitude for those four years (with Goff), all the good memories that we had — and then when you end up making a change, that ended up being difficult.
“Could it have been handled better on my end? Absolutely. I’ll never run away from that. But the further you get away from it, the more that you try to grow as a man, as a person, as the leader that you want to become.
“He deserved better than the way that it all went down. I’ll acknowledge that, and I think he knows that too. I’m not afraid to admit to those things. But I think we’re all better being able to look back on those things and I do have more appreciation for him as time goes on.”
Goff became a team captain and core leader over the next three years with the Lions.
In Detroit on Wednesday, Goff was asked about his relationship with/sentiments toward McVay.
“Yeah, Sean and I are good. I think he’s a great coach,” said Goff. “Obviously, we had our differences there at the end, but he’s a great coach. He’s done a lot of great things and he’s a guy that taught me a lot.”
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