In an alternate universe, Matthew Stafford is under center for the 49ers this weekend.
When the Rams and 49ers meet in the NFC championship game, it won’t be the first time San Francisco has looked at Stafford with envious eyes. When Stafford’s draft opened last offseason, both NFC West teams were interested in Stafford’s talents.
MORE: Matthew Stafford gets his defining moment in the playoffs
In the end, Sean McVay and the Rams stepped in and stole Stafford almost literally from Kyle Shanahan’s nose in a story that features Cabo, the wrong hotel, and a situation that could have ended up potentially “awkward.”
This is how Stafford ended up in Hollywood:
Matthew Stafford Business Details
In 2021, the Lions and Rams agreed to a trade to send veteran QB Matthew Stafford to the West Coast. The details:
- rams hosted quarterback Matthew Stafford;
- lions received quarterback Jared Goff, 2021 third-round pick and 2022 first-round pick, 2023 first-round pick.
The Lions would select cornerback Ifatu Melifonwu with the third round pick sent out by the Lions.
The Rams would also eat up the $2.5 million roster bonus Goff owned when the deal closed at the start of the new league year.
Change of Matthew Stafford revised
On January 30, Adam Schefter reported that the Rams and Lions have agreed to a trade that would send the Lions’ star quarterback to Los Angeles for Jared Goff and draft picks. The trade would not be made official until the start of the new league year in March, but the deal was in place.
However, Stafford’s exit plan was in the works before the start of the 2020 season. Reports indicated that Stafford potentially wanted out of Detroit and did not want to deal with another rebuild as the Lions were apparently heading into the end of the season.
Stafford had suitors. He reportedly vetoed trades to the Panthers, while preferring three teams in total: the Rams, the Colts and … the 49ers. (As an aside, he also refused to be traded to the Patriots, according to reports.)
The last two teams in the mix were NFC West rivals, with the Rams finally making the deal to bring him to Los Angeles.
It was a photo finish. in an episode of The Ringer’s “Flying Coach” PodcastShanahan explained how close the 49ers came to making a move for the former Lions quarterback the night he finally landed in a Rams uniform.
You don’t want me to start, man. That was frustrating. She was actually in Cabo, she was seeing everything. She had never studied Stafford so hard. I remember looking at it and everyone telling me it was a possibility. Stafford is the man, I studied him a lot coming out of college, and we always used to play him, so you know how good he is. But knowing he could be available and then spending two weeks really looking at him, Sean? Yes. It’s better than I realized. He was the man, and he is underrated to me. …
I was trying to get involved in it. Someone who had knowledge of the situation: He was talking to (Tom) Condon and everyone to find out when it was happening. I remember on Saturday I was really stressed out, and finally we talked to someone and it was like 7 at night, and they said, “No, nothing will happen until at least tomorrow. So you can finish your night.” So I’m like, “Okay, I’m done.” I hang up my phone, talk to Mandy, “Let’s go out to dinner, have a few drinks.”
Half an hour later, a friend of mine calls me and says, “I’m just telling you, if you want Stafford, you need to get in touch with him right now.” And I was like, “What do you mean? We just talked to people, I can sleep on this, we’ll talk to them tomorrow.” “I’m just telling you that you need to talk to him right now.” And I knew it, and I turned on my phone, and it was all over. It was not funny.
Coincidentally, Shanahan was in Cabo, Mexico, at the same time as Stafford and McVay, further illustrating how painfully close Stafford was to Shanahan; McVay joked that, luckily, Shanahan was staying at a different hotel than he and Stafford. Shanahan said it would have been an “awkward” situation.
While the 49ers would lose Stafford, John Lynch and company would pivot to find their next quarterback in the NFL draft. San Francisco would trade two future first-round picks to move up and select quarterback Trey Lance with the third overall pick in the 2021 NFL Draft.
Lance played minimal snaps this year, just starting and playing in place of an injured Jimmy Garoppolo. Although Garoppolo is dealing with injuries now, the 49ers have opted not to play Lance in place of their current QB1.
Now, a year later, both teams face each other in the “Stafford Bowl”. Or something.
www.sportingnews.com
Eddie is an Australian news reporter with over 9 years in the industry and has published on Forbes and tech crunch.