Matthew Stafford took home his first MVP award last season after throwing for a league-high 4,707 yards and 46 touchdowns. His numbers to start this year have paled in comparison, only tossing six touchdown passes and six interceptions in four games.
Suffice to say, it’s been an up-and-down season thus far, mixing big-time throws with costly mistakes that have led to turnovers and points for the other team.
Now that the first quarter of the season is in the books, Stafford evaluated his play when asked during Thursday’s press conference. He admitted he can certainly be better and wishes he had some throws back.
“Definitely room for improvement,” he said. “There have been some really bright moments and some stuff I'm really proud of and stuff that
I definitely wish I could take back to help us be in a better position to win games. That comes with the position. I understand that. I've been doing it a long time. I want to do everything I can to put our team in the best position to succeed. I've done that sometimes this year and other times I have not. I want to make sure that I do that at a more consistent clip moving forward.”
Sean McVay also shared his evaluation of Stafford’s play. He went more in-depth than the Rams quarterback did, highlighting Stafford’s performance in crunch time when the Rams needed him to come through.
“I think it's hard to be able to say when you're looking at the collective,” he said. “The cool thing about him, he was at his best in the most important moments. That's the competitive greatness. To find a way in spite of some different things that maybe didn't go our way throughout the course of the day, to go 98 and to go 78. That is everything you need to know about Matthew. I think there's a consistency of, just offensively, I look at it and you're saying, 'Alright, there are some things that he'd want back.' You show me a great quarterback that – I'll show you a guy that's going to want a couple of plays back, but it seems like we've all taken our turn. Whether I'm not putting us in a good situation and can provide better clarity, whether it's alright, maybe there's a decision that I'd want to make.”
Stafford threw two picks against the Eagles last week, which McVay partly attributes to the ball being slick due to the rain in Philadelphia. And despite those two big mistakes, Stafford still delivered a fourth-quarter comeback for the 40th time in his career.
“The ball was a little bit more slick on the one that sailed on the play action, but I thought he was at his best in the most important moments,” he said. “There's nobody that I'd rather have leading us, and I think the steadiness of his demeanor to be able to handle the ebbs and flows has been exactly what we want. Even in the Denver game where we came up short, he gave us every chance to find a way to finish that out. The first game was really unique and then he was really good against the Giants. It still is a small sample size, but he's the man and I'm really glad he's leading us.”
Stafford is averaging 297.3 yards per game, which is up from last year when he averaged 276.9 to lead the NFL. But he’s also averaging 40.5 pass attempts per game, up from the 35 he averaged a season ago.
Much of that is because the Rams have trailed in three of their four games thus far, but Stafford is partly to blame because of his interceptions. It’s not that his game is regressing. He’s just missing some throws that he usually makes and is turning the ball over more than he did last year.
This article originally appeared on Rams Wire: Matthew Stafford evaluates his performance in Rams' first 4 games
