Time for Lions’ Stafford to take next step
DETROIT - After eight NFL seasons and a lifetime playing football, Matthew Stafford knows the drill.
“I’m a quarterback,” Stafford said this week. “In this league, you probably get more credit when you play well and more blame when you don’t as a team.”
That dynamic has been at play with quarterbacks since the invention of the forward pass, and it’s about to hit a whole new level with Stafford this year.
The newly minted highest-paid player in NFL history, Stafford will be under more scrutiny and have more pressure to perform than ever before. And that’s saying something considering he was the No. 1 overall pick in 2009 and the top high school recruit in the country before that.
Stafford has had a fine career to this point. He holds every meaningful Lions passing record, and some arbitrary NFL ones, too. He’s made the playoffs three times in the last six seasons. And he’s proven to be as clutch as any quarterback in the game, with eight come-frombehind wins last year alone.
But the one thing missing from Stafford’s resume is postseason success, and the Lions didn’t give him the keys to the vault expecting that to stay the same.
This is about money, sure. When you’re the highest-paid player in the NFL, you’re rightfully held to a higher standard.
But it’s also about where Stafford is at this point of his career.
Just 29 years old, Stafford is an ascending player in the middle of his prime years. He’s gotten significantly better in the season and a half since Jim Bob Cooter took over as offensive coordinator. And the time has come for him to elevate his supporting cast “as average as it is in some places “to greater things.
That’s what Aaron Rodgers does in Green Bay. That’s what Andrew Luck does in Indianapolis. And that’s what Stafford occasionally has done in Detroit.
Last year, the Lions don’t win six games without Stafford’s heroics. Yet by the end of the season, there was no suspense about how things were going to end.
This year, the Lions don’t enter the season as favorites in the NFC, or even their own division. They need Fixodent for their pass rush. They’ll pray a rosary every Sunday at left tackle (at least until Taylor Decker returns). Even their Pro Bowl-caliber punter, Sam Martin, is hurt.
But with Stafford under center, and given the skill players around around him, they still are plenty capable of reaching the postseason and winning some games.
To apologists, that may come across as a contradiction. It’s not.
Every NFL team has holes, and topflight quarterbacks like Stafford are paid to win while working around them.
Of the 11 other quarterbacks who’ve joined Stafford in leading their teams to the playoffs at least three times in the past six seasons, just one “Andy Dalton “has yet to win a postseason game.
The quarterback win stat is not a fair one, but it’s also life in the NFL.
Stafford is 5-46 against teams that finish with a winning record. He’s 0-3 in the playoffs. And though he’s significantly better than Dalton as a player, he’s on the same plain for now.
Stafford said this week that he feels “extremely responsible for” whatever becomes of the Lions’ season this year.
“I’ve felt that way for, going into my ninth year now,” Stafford said. “There’s no ifs, ands or buts about it, the quarterback in the league is an extremely important part of the team.”
In Stafford, the Lions have a very good one.
And given where he’s at right now -improving as a player, with a solid supporting cast and a contract that hardly made anyone flinch -- it’s OK to demand he becomes great.
Dave Birkett writes for the Detroit Free Press, part of the USA TODAY Network. Contact Birkett: dbirkett@freepress.com.