Los Angeles Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford is the reigning NFL MVP, but he hasn’t looked quite the same through four games this season, and with a huge matchup against the Buffalo Bills on Monday Night Football coming up tonight, Sean McVay would love for his star passer to snap back into that elite form. The only problem? According to Nate Tice, the quarterback’s season has been too “weird” to expect the same results that Stafford had last year.
“Stafford’s been weird to me this year,” Tice said,
noting first that he’s already scrambled more times in 2026 than he did in all of 2025, before getting into the meat of his argument:
“The Eagles ran just a bunch of cover-2 and cover-6, and it wasn’t like the Rams were like, ‘Here come the digs, here come the in-breakers’ like I’ve seen him do against those coverages before. Everything was outside and vertical. That’s not really how you beat cover-2 […] but now Stafford’s just not really throwing over the middle.”
Nate Tice has emerged as one of the biggest names in the modern NFL media space as the host of his podcast, Football 301, along with guest spots on maybe every other football podcast that exists. A former college quarterback and NFL coach, he’s arguably as good as anyone in the business right now at breaking down quarterback play and offensive systems.
So, when he says Matthew Stafford has been “weird,” it makes your ears perk up.
Stafford has thrown six interceptions and six touchdowns in L.A.’s first four games, including two starts without number one receiver Puka Nacua. His passer rating is down from 109.2 last season to just 80.5 so far this season, a stat that could reflect what Tice is talking about in terms of throwing over the middle of the field.
MOF
Tice continued the thought with stats backing up Stafford’s more limited attack over the middle of the field. This season, only 6.5% of Stafford’s throws are to the intermediate middle, or 10-22 yards downfield and between the numbers. Tice said that’s one of the lowest marks in the NFL this season, and it pales in comparison to some of his previous rates, like when he threw there upwards of 11.5% of the time last year and around 14% when he arrived in Los Angeles in 2021.
What’s more, Stafford isn’t targeting his receivers as often as he typically does. This season, he’s only targeting receivers about 48% of the time, compared to nearly 61.5% of the time last season and about 73% in 2024.
To play the fairness game, there are reasons to explain away a lot of these critiques.
Nacua has been banged up and it wouldn’t be smart to use an aging Davante Adams on a ton of in-breaking routes all game long. The offensive line hasn’t been perfect by any means (see the chart below) and when you roster as many tight ends as the Rams do, you’re not going to use them the same way you’re using your wide receivers, generally speaking.
All of those are fair counters to Tice’s point. But it’s also easy to find the validity in what he’s saying.
The Rams want to hunt explosive plays. Sean McVay wants to create as many as he can. One of the best ways to do that is to throw receivers open over the middle and to give them chances to run after the catch. That’s not the only way to generate YAC, but it’s one of the most consistent ways to do it.
Thus, if Stafford is throwing to that YAC-heavy area of the field at a starkly lower clip than usual, that’s going to impact the offense and it’s going to hamper Stafford’s production.
It’s not time to sound the alarm yet. It’s too early to assume Stafford is washed up or anything like that. But there’s clearly something different about the Rams’ starting quarterback this year, and this could be a reason behind that.
Monday night is his next opportunity to prove that he’s still got the same juice that helped him win MVP.
