(News4UsOnline) – What comes to mind when you think of Los Angeles Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford is the word gunslinger. Stafford can sling the ball around a football field like it’s nobody’s business.
The numbers he has managed to put up throughout his prolific passing career will make him a sure-fire Hall of Famer. Yet, it is hard to imagine that in 17 seasons, Stafford has never won the NFL’s most valuable player award.
Throughout out his well-documented career, Stafford has done just about everything a quarterback can do. He’s won a Super Bowl. He’s been voted to the Pro Bowl and All-Pro teams. Yet, the hardware from being named the league’s MVP has eluded him. At least until now.
Following the kind of season Stafford had in 2025, this may be the best opportunity for the longtime signal-caller to claim the MVP trophy. His teammates and Los Angeles Rams head coach Sean McVay believe Stafford is well-deserving of the award.
“Yes, I think Matthew’s the MVP of the league,” McVay said after Stafford ended the regular season with a four-touchdown performance in the Rams’ 37-20 win against the Arizona Cardinals in Week 18.
“He played that way. I wouldn’t want anybody else leading the way. I got a lot of respect for a bunch of people in this league, but there’s nobody I’d rather have be the quarterback of the LA Rams than Matthew Stafford. His play speaks for itself,” McVay went on to say.
The stat sheet is always a good gauge of how well a player has performed, but it does not paint the entire picture. Stafford’s worth and value to the Rams goes well beyond the 4,707 yards he threw for during the 2025 season.
His leadership qualities are traits where Stafford stand out, McVay said.
“It’s his presence. It’s his steadiness,” McVay remarked during a Zoom conference call. “It’s his calm in the midst of chaos. It’s the confidence that he provides for everybody. There’s no way that you could measure the importance and the influence of the impact that he makes. The stats tell one story, but also there’s something to be said for the power of belief when you have a guy at quarterback that you have such belief in and he has such a great emotional intelligence and great natural leadership traits of the timing and tone of when to say things or when to be able to get people up.”
It surpasses the 46 touchdowns on the season that he accounted for. It almost certainly supercedes the 65 percent completion mark he had. When the Rams traded Jared Goff in exchange for Stafford, they got a quarterback with all the right ingredients who could take them and win a Super Bowl.
That box has already been checked.
Stafford and the Rams defeated the Cincinnati Bengals to win Super Bowl LVI. Now with the chase for Super Bowl LX officially underway with Wild Card weekend, Stafford and the Rams began this journey with a rematch against the Carolina Panthers, a team that defeated them in Week 13.
“We’re a little bit of a different team now than we were back then,” Stafford said. “They’re healthier now than they were when we played them. There are some things that are going to change that are different from what happened when we played them. They’re still a really talented team, speaking specifically against what I’ll be facing and our offense to be facing their defense playing really good football right now.”
Stafford has led the Rams on a remarkable run this season, The Rams finished the season with a 12-5 record and narrowly missed out on claiming the top spot in the NFC West Division.
The fact that Stafford played and started all 17 games is somewhat a minor miracle in itself, considering the issues that the Rams star quarterback was having with his back way back in training camp.
“There were some lean moments,” Stafford said. “It was touch and go there for a little bit.”
The Rams had their own touch-and-go moment toward the end of the regular season when they went on a two-game skid against Seattle and Atlanta. Stafford’s four touchdown passes in the team’s season finale against the Cardinals steered the Rams right back on course just in time for the playoffs.
That’s something that McVay can appreciate about Stafford.
“The thing that you could say the most is when you have some challenging moments and adversity’s inevitable whether it be within games or going through a stretch, when you can look to one of your leaders and say, ‘I believe in this guy and this is somebody that I want to follow that gives me confidence and inspires me to want to do right because I think we’re headed in the right direction.’ Man, does that say a lot,” McVay said.
Dennis has covered and written about politics, crime, race, sports, and entertainment. Dennis currently covers the NFL, MLB, NBA, NCAA, and Olympic sports. Dennis is the editor of News4usonline.com and serves as the publisher of the Compton Bulletin newspaper. He earned a journalism degree from Howard University. Email Dennis at dfreeman@news4usonline.com
Discover more from
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.