Column: This is Matthew Stafford’s moment to prove the Rams right
Calling Matthew Stafford a losing quarterback because he didn’t win big when he was with the Detroit Lions is like saying the kids from “Ozark” are a little messed up. Yeah, they are, but can you blame them?
Fair or not, Stafford’s chance to distance himself from a franchise whose all-time winningest coach has a losing record (66-67) all boils down to Sunday. If he leads the Rams to a win over the 49ers, he will leave the stench of his 86-95-1 career record back in Detroit, a city whose baseball team has managed to draft more Super Bowl-winning QBs (Patrick Mahomes and Charlie Batch) than its football team has.
Look at the abysmal racial records of big corporations and the U.S. Senate.
But if Stafford loses … well, we all know what’s going to be said about him if he loses.
He knows it too.
Which is why when he arrives at SoFi Stadium, I hope he remembers to breathe.
Research shows that how we breathe in moments of stress influences both our parasympathetic nervous system (fight or flight reactions) and our sympathetic nervous system (rest and digest). The deeper and slower the breath, the more relaxed we are likely to become.
“American Underdog” is a Christian movie, but not one of those “gray clouds part and butterfly lands on protagonist” kind of Christian movies.
Of course, it’s easier to remember all of that in a yoga class than it is during the NFC championship game — especially when everyone watching knows the team gave up a good chunk of its tomorrow in hopes of winning with you today: a 2021 third-round pick, first-round picks in both 2022 and 2023, and Jared Goff, a 27-year-old quarterback who may not have been a world beater but who at least had won a playoff game. That’s something the 33-year-old Stafford hadn’t done in 12 seasons with Detroit.
A win would justify the team’s investment and send them to the Super Bowl next month.
A loss — no matter how close — and this great experiment will be ridiculed by many as a failure, with Stafford as the face of the fiasco. Minutiae and analytical nuance will be no match for hot takes and hyperbole. That’s how a quarterback who is tied for seventh all-time in game-winning drives can be deemed a loser in the first place.
Not very effectively, though. Cherry-picking quotes didn’t help him defend his COVID deception.
As in most things, the truth is somewhere in the middle. But we don’t do middle. Not when it’s time to look back on an athlete’s career. So if the San Francisco 49ers beat the Los Angeles Rams on Sunday, Stafford will be stamped “loser” despite winning the NFC West, the toughest division in football; despite a nine-play 75-yard game-winning drive in Baltimore at the beginning of the month; despite besting Tom Brady on the road with another game-winning drive barely a week ago.
Stafford knows what people will say. Which is why he can’t forget to breathe.
“Deep breathing,” the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center reminds us, “helps you calm down rapidly, think more clearly and focus on what you are doing.”
All Stafford should be trying to do is win a football game on Sunday. Of course, we all know he is trying to do so much more.
It was Kenny Washington and the Rams that broke the league’s color barrier, a year before Jackie Robinson and the Dodgers integrated Major League Baseball.
I’m originally from Detroit. I watched what happened to Billy Sims’ career. Barry Sanders’ career. Calvin Johnson’s. I attended some of those games during the 0-16 season. I’ve attended some of the Thanksgiving Day debacles too. Those greats I mentioned earlier never got out, so they at least have the luxury of having their career shortcomings viewed through the prism of a franchise that managed to win just a single playoff game in the modern NFL era.
Stafford’s already different. The Lions’ all-time leading passer got out. Not only that, the other team that reportedly was interested in acquiring him via trade is the team he must now beat on Sunday.
So much drama.
So much is at stake.
Breathe.
Even if the Raiders aren’t flying rainbow flags, Monday’s game marks the end of a century of institutional homophobia.
Since Stafford’s been drafted, no quarterback has had more fourth-quarter comebacks. Since he’s been drafted, no quarterback has thrown more pick sixes. He’s played with a ligament tear in the thumb of his throwing hand. He’s played with a separated shoulder. He’s played with a broken back. But this is the first time he is playing in a game that matters with expectations, which may prove to be the biggest challenge of them all.
Thich Nhat Hanh, the Zen master who died last week, once said: “Whenever your mind becomes scattered, use your breath as the means to take hold of your mind again.”
My hope for Stafford is that he finds stillness in the chaos, some joy in the madness. We all know there is so much for him to think about, and yet in order to succeed he must find a way not to think about any of it. At least not while he’s playing. No, in what is easily the biggest game of his career, he has to set those thoughts aside and remember to breathe.
As for me … I’ll be holding my breath.
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