It's pretty universal that experts think Stafford will have a good year, so why is no one drafting him?
Matthew Stafford is arguably the best QB to experience the least amount of success in history. He threw for over 5000 yards in 2011, in a 10-6 season that ended in a quick wild card loss, and nearly threw for 5000 the following year in a 4-12 season. Bad QBs don’t throw for 5000 yards, I don’t care what the rest of team does. He is aging, yet we have seen what older elite QBs can accomplish when in the right situation. The Rams are a playoff bound team, with many analysts (including myself) predicting a Super Bowl run or NFC championship as the floor for these guys. With the Rams stellar defense, the offense doesn’t necessarily need to produce record numbers, but Stafford wasn’t brought in to hand the ball off. Just look at what was required of Goff and the revolving door of QBs last year down the stretch of their run, it was a lot. And despite the staunch running game, it still wasn’t enough to get them to the top, and after the embarrassment in Super Bowl 53 head coach Sean McVay knows they need more reliable QB play if they want to win the whole thing. Detroit attempted to put more receiving talent around Stafford with Golladay, Hockenson, and Marvin Jones Jr, but the overall poor play of the team as a whole made everyone on that team a floor value with a risky ceiling in fantasy.
Now Stafford is in Los Angeles, and we have already seen Woods, Kupp, Reynolds, and Higbee produce decent fantasy numbers under Goff, even with their running game producing with the likes of Gurley and Akers at RB. Akers went down for the season with an Achilles injury, so that leaves the backfield helmed by the versatile Darrell Henderson, who is more like Darren Sproles than Cam Akers. That means even more necessity for Stafford to be utilized, even on short dump passes, and all that adds to more fantasy opportunity for the veteran QB.
Now let’s talk why I really like Stafford this year: draft value. Fantasy managers are tending to gamble on the likes of Jalen Hurts, Justin Herbert, and Tom Brady rather than put Stafford on their team, mostly due to recency bias and the unknowns of a new team. But those same analysts that are predicting the Rams to have success are basically ranking Stafford as the QB-12, a fringe starter in fantasy, though in reality a lot of people are taking the ceiling of Joe Burrow, Trevor Lawrence, and even Matt Ryan over him. This creates an interesting fantasy opportunity to employ the Double Down QB strategy, and pair Stafford with a high-upside target like Burrow, Hurts, Lance, Fields, or Zach Wilson. Stafford can start for you day 1, and all season if necessary, but if you hit in your ceiling QB you have either a solid backup in case of injury or valuable trade fodder once the injury bug starts to sweep through the league.
Either way, I see a big year for Stafford, and whether you pair him with a flashy young prospect or roll with him season long, you can’t go wrong putting Stafford on your team if your plan isn’t to go for one of the top 8 QBs off the board in the early rounds.
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