WOODLAND HILLS, Calif. — Last summer, Los Angeles Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford laid his ailing back flat on a blank white bed and let a flow of red light shoot through him.
He went into the Ammortal Chamber as a 37-year-old clinging to something in his past, desperate to find out who he’d be on the other side.
Then came a return to the practice field and the start of a 17th NFL season. And in Week 1, as he dropped back in the Los Angeles sunlight and ripped passes with velocity, I realized I’d seen this act before.
This looked like the Detroit Lions version of Stafford, six years after I’d watched him light up an overcast field in Michigan. All that was different was the gray beard poking through his chin strap. The next day, I told him as such.
“Good,” he said with a smile. “We’re trying to keep it that way.”
It was just about humanly impossible for Stafford to see then what was about to come: 20 games played, 52 touchdown passes, nine interceptions and 14 wins, with explosive throws and shimmy dances and a sprint downfield screaming about himself after a go-ahead score.
But I now believe he saw something in that first game week. Kind of like one of his no-look passes, he knew something was there that the others couldn’t see.
One final season of living as that five-star recruit who became a slam-dunk No. 1 pick, now hardened by the places he’s been and the narratives still left to shatter.
On Thursday night, Stafford will find out whether he’ll win his first MVP award at the NFL Honors ceremony. He’s a finalist along with New England Patriots quarterback Drake Maye, Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen, Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence and San Francisco 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey.
This is Stafford’s first finish in the top five of the MVP voting. This isn’t the first time he’s flashed an MVP look in his production, highlights or clutch play. However, it is the first time it’s all come together like this.
His 2025 season now leaves the seeds that show exactly how this back-to-life year came to be.
Start with Week 2 in Tennessee. The Rams were tied with the lowly Titans with 32 seconds left in the first half. Stafford dropped back, saw a route developing along the left sideline and let it rip — right into the arms of a Titans linebacker he hadn’t seen.
As the Titans drilled a field goal to take the halftime lead, Stafford spiked his blue and yellow helmet into the Nissan Stadium turf. By the time Davante Adams came over to console him, his receiver found a different person with the helmet off.
“I told him during the game: ‘Bro, you are the coolest dude I’ve been around,’ ” Adams said. “He’s not cussing. He’s not blaming anybody. It was like it happened in practice.”
Adams would bring that moment up after games in his first season playing with Stafford in Los Angeles. Ask him if he saw MVP traits out of his quarterback, and he’d say he saw them in Week 2.
At that point, Adams still needed to see something for himself. He’d signed with the Rams on a two-year deal to replace Cooper Kupp, a bet on the winning environment he didn’t experience with the Las Vegas Raiders or New York Jets. But he didn’t get to play with Stafford in training camp, when the veteran QB was lying in the Ammortal Chamber.
He, too, was looking through the helmet and wondering whether those grays in the beard were signs of a man slowing down or a stronger one emerging.
In Week 4, Stafford dropped back from his own 12-yard line in a tie game against the Indianapolis Colts and saw something from the corner of his eye.
Tutu Atwell, the same player he forced the ball to on the interception in Tennessee, broke open as a defender fell to the turf. He was on the back side of the formation, the last option in the progression on a route Stafford had never thrown before. Stafford lofted a pass up the seam that Atwell took to the end zone for an 88-yard game-winning touchdown.
“I’m a f—ing dawg!” Stafford screamed as he sprinted downfield.
Stafford has long learned to keep his reactions private. But even as he knew he was mic’d up, he couldn’t stop this euphoria. The joy shot through his body like those red lights from the Ammortal Chamber, igniting a player who wasn’t just back like before. This one was somehow even better.
Stafford would go on to throw 28 consecutive touchdown passes without an interception to set an NFL record.
A swirl of circumstances brought out the best season of his life: His offense evolved from an every-down 11-personnel approach to one that lined up three tight ends at a time. Play action emerged with a run game featuring Kyren Williams and Blake Corum, which spent most of the season at the top of efficiency metrics, creating a world unlike the four straight calendar years he played in Detroit, where no running back went over 100 rushing yards in a game.
His back had less to carry now. And that would prove to be all the strength it needed to let his arm and mind create art.
The Rams’ 13-personnel explosion became a chess move for a veteran player with knowledge of the board that few others could possess. And then came the no-look passes.
There was the one against the 49ers in Week 10, when he ran a play-action fake to the right, kept his back facing left and uncorked a toss back to the left that hit tight end Colby Parkinson as he high-legged into the end zone.
And there was Stafford, throwing his arms into the air to signal touchdown and then shimmying for the camera.
In that joy, in the rebound from the earlier interceptions and the ability to get off the white bed and play again, Stafford showed something to his teammates they hope the country can realize Thursday night.
“I know there’s a lot of media hype for Drake (Maye) and a lot of people pushing it, but there’s nobody who can lead a team like Matt does,” defensive end and captain Kobie Turner said. “There’s nobody who can make those plays in the clutch moments like Matt does.”
This isn’t the first time Stafford has had a lane to the MVP trophy.
In the 2016 season, he was leading the Lions on a run that was hard to fathom for the franchise. They’d won four consecutive games to get to 8-4 when they hosted the Chicago Bears the following Sunday. Stafford threw a pass and, on his follow-through, slapped the helmet of a pass rusher and dislocated the middle finger on his right hand.
He tucked the pain beneath the adrenaline to barrel through two defenders while clutching the football in that hurt hand for another game-winning score, one of eight that season, which still stands as an NFL record.
However, the finger injury never went away. He went on to play four more games, but his production and downfield throws declined. Mired in Detroit’s four-year drought without a 100-yard rusher in a game, it all became too much for a then-28-year-old to lift.
That moment was buried somewhere inside him when he faced the Carolina Panthers in this year’s wild-card round. After the season of his lifetime, Stafford sprained a finger on his throwing hand once again on a follow-through. He completed just 2 of 12 passes in the middle stretch of the game. And soon, his team’s season was on life support, down four points with 2 minutes, 34 seconds left.
Adams ran onto the field with him again.
“Let’s go snatch these guys’ hearts,” Stafford said.
And then he ripped throw after throw, to Adams and others, before laying a ball out on the sideline that only Parkinson could sky to reach before spinning into the end zone for a game-winning score with 38 seconds remaining.
“That was one of the most gangsta things you could say,” Adams said. “The look on his face, and then to throw the touchdown and the look on his face after that. MVP stuff.”
This was Stafford, hardened by the emptiness of those Detroit seasons, now with the knowledge of what it takes to win in the playoffs. He’d show it again the next week in one of his worst games in the divisional round in Chicago. He’d get the ball one final time in overtime in the snow and rip a cross-body throw to Adams along the sideline while falling back to set up a game-winning field goal to beat the Bears.
After his seventh career playoff victory — seven more than he had in Detroit — Stafford embraced coach Sean McVay for a hug.
“Hey, way to hang with me,” Stafford told him. “I was dog s— for a while.”
Of all the moments that could tell the story of Stafford’s best season, the ones that stick with those closest to him happen away from the playing field.
“What you don’t see is that he’s in that office right next to me in that quarterback room at 5:45 every single morning starting his prep, being able to impact and influence the questions, the intrinsic motivation, the ability to be able to give confidence to the other 10 guys because he truly is an extension of the coaching staff,” McVay said.
It’s in Stafford, showing up to Tuesday breakfast with his four daughters: 8-year-old twins Sawyer and Chandler, 7-year-old Hunter and 5-year-old Tyler.
“People walk through the door and (my daughters are) like, ‘Oh, there’s Braden Fiske,’ ” Stafford said. “I’m like, ‘It’s kind of a good one to know. D-lineman, kind of non-descript. Pretty awesome.’ I was impressed. So it’s really fun. It’s what keeps me coming back and it gets me in the right headspace before the game starts every time.”
The behind-the-scenes moments have long humanized Stafford to his teammates, translating the make-believe on the field into someone they can have a beer with or attend a Halloween party at his mansion.
In Detroit, that meant meeting with every single wide receiver on the active roster and practice squad after a session to talk through the playbook, or flying out rookie players to a retreat at his home in Georgia before they had the money to buy their own way.
In Los Angeles, it’s manifested in a new way.
Stafford’s four daughters are now all old enough to come to his games. That’s why he lay under those red lights in the summer, and it’s also what got him off the white bed and back onto the field.
“The girls are getting to an age to see their dad do something,” general manager Les Snead said, “that only so many people on this planet can do.”
The four daughters came to his final home game of the season against the Arizona Cardinals, waiting for their father to sprint over before the game, to take that helmet off and show the face they see each night before bed and when they open their eyes in the morning.
“We’re on there!” one of them shouted while pointing at the video board above SoFi Stadium. “Look at it!”
“Last game of Daddy’s 17th season,” Stafford’s wife, Kelly, told the daughters.
“I love you guys,” Stafford said.
Then he ran back onto the field and threw the final four touchdowns on his NFL-leading 46-touchdown regular season.
If Stafford wins the MVP award or doesn’t, if he decides to hang up the helmet this offseason or come back for another run, the motivation will be in those smiles and points at the video board.
It’ll be in the eyes of the daughters he found at 2:30 a.m. after his 17th season ended in the NFC Championship Game against the Seattle Seahawks, after he became the first quarterback in NFL history to throw for 350 yards with three touchdowns and no turnovers and lose a playoff game.
One of them said she felt bad for him, and he held her in his arms and told her not to cry.
“I get to play this game. I’ve gotten to play it for 17 years,” Stafford said on his “Let’s Go!” podcast. “I’ve got four little girls that are cheering me on, a beautiful wife that’s doing the same. And sports, and football in particular, is difficult at times, but it also gives me the opportunity to teach my kids and be something for them, right? I could sit there and go, ‘Man, I feel like I played good and we didn’t win, and this happened and that happened, and excuses.’
“But it’s like, ‘No, have the courage to go put yourself out there, live with the results and learn from ’em.’”
Whether he comes back or not is what so many people are waiting to find out. It’s the next vision he’ll see before anyone else does.