The Ballad of Matthew Stafford

 

It’s Christmas which means that somewhere Matthew Stafford is walking on broken glass like Bruce Willlis. And somewhere, Lions fans bitch about him because we hate everything. It’s fair to say that I have had a love/hate relationship with Stafford going back to the day he was drafted, and in the interim between now and then, I’ve been frustrated many a time by his lack to “win the big one” forgetting of course that it’s the Lions and to blame one dude for not being able to “win the big one” is ludicrous.

 

Also, so soon we forget Stafford leading the Lions to a win as a baby QB back in the day while playing with a broken everything. Which brings us to today where Stafford again plays with a broken everything. His quest for a goddamn meaningful win is much like Odysseus trying to return home to his wife. Oh yeah, that’s right, Stafford’s wife is also battling the Big C all the time. He is a man who should be wrecked, but he isn’t. Instead he just tries to get home and win the damn game of life.

 

He has the heart of a Spirit Warrior, as only a special kind of dude could handle playing QB for a decade plus for the Detroit Lions. Is he a perfect QB? No, of course not. But I think he is good enough to win with for a good team, but that “for a good team” caveat looms large. The dude has thrown for 45,000 yards which is good for 16^th ALL TIME. That’s uh, that’s good no matter how you break things down. Assuming he has at least another good five years in him, or shit, maybe longer given the NFL’s new ageless QB trend, he has a very legit shot at being top 5 all time. Read that again.

 

Stafford is one of those dudes who you don’t know what you’ve got until he’s gone and then you get Dan Orlovsky running out of the back of his own endzone. He’s also 16^th all time in passing TD’s and again, when it’s all said and done, he will at the very least be top 10, probably closer to top 5. The numbers are insane, and speak to a dude who is underappreciated in his own time.

 

Those numbers, of course, tend to get overshadowed by the optics of never winning a playoff game or even beating winning teams, but the Lions are so fucking wretched that it’s almost shameful to put the blame on him. I mean, this is a team that broke the will of Barry Sanders AND Calvin Johnson, and yet Stafford is still in there fighting his ass off when he could just walk away. But he hasn’t and he deserves all of our love for at least that much.

 

He is a tragic figure, Hector to the rest of the NFL’s Achilles, shit, to the Lions Achilles. He is the last hero of a beleaguered kingdom, and yet his fate is to be dragged behind a fucking horse. But, like I alluded to earlier, he is also Odysseus, fighting a bunch of strange and crazy shit like giant cyclops just to try to make it home. Hint: Odysseus eventually made it home and then killed all the dudes macking on his wife. If that is Stafford’s fate, I’ll take it.

 

It is that duality between doomed hero and a dude who never stops fighting that makes him so compelling, and, ultimately, worthy of inspiring that rarest of things for Lions fans: hope. It is a fragile thing, that hope, beset by Lions Disease at every step along the way, but if the Lions are ever gonna win anything, it will be with Stafford at quarterback. On any other team, he is talked about as an all-time great. With the Lions, he’s a perpetual scapegoat.

 

More than even the numbers, though, is Stafford’s warrior like determination to play through pain, carrying the cross to the hill for his own crucifixion in between throwing for all those yards and TD’s. He is often derided and betrayed by his own people, but his martyrdom will one day be looked upon with reverence and respect. He is the best Lions QB ever and it isn’t even close.

 

I am, of course, getting wild and ridiculous with my metaphors here, but that’s what I do. And I feel sort of a kinship to Stafford as a dude who goes overlooked in his own time. I think everyone can relate to that at least on some level. Whether it’s your boss not valuing you enough, or your wife up and leaving you, or old friends ghosting you for making Poor Choices, you know you deserve better.

 

What “better” means is always open to interpretation, but what it will always mean at its base level is that we are all just people who want to be loved for who we are, for what we do. Stafford’s desire for “better” is public in a way that would break most people. And yet, he never breaks. Inside, he’s just a dude looking for love, for “better” just like all of us. That is an everyman sort of quality that is rare, especially in the ego factory that is the NFL and their near sociopathic QBs. Stafford, though, *cares* and that is perhaps both his strength and his weakness, which is true of anyone who cares like that.

 

He is not the dude to go all Patrick Bateman like Tom Brady. He is not some cocky young thing like Patrick Mahomes. He is just a dude trying his hardest to overcome decades worth of absurd failure that is Detroit Lions football. Others would sulk, demand trades, fight with their own front office, but Stafford just goes to work and try to be the man who finally transcends Lions Disease.

 

He will always be the dude who dragged himself onto the field for a game winning drive as a young dude. Just as he’ll always be the dude who turned that comeback into something of an artform. And he’ll always be the dude who played through the pain just for a chance to fight back against Lions Disease.

 

People always want to blame the QB when things are going bad, and unfortunately things are damn near always going bad for the Lions. But please, dudes and lady dudes, blame someone else, anyone else, because this QB is a fucking Spirit Warrior who never says die. And that makes him pretty unique in the Lions grander culture and history. Everyone else quit. Stafford never did, and he doesn’t look likely to do so anytime soon. Hector and Odysseus all in one, John McLane walking on broken glass, he is all of these dudes, and yet, he is also One Of Us, and he embraces it. He is in the mud with the rest of us and that makes him a brother. Embrace him.