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For all intents and purposes, the Detroit Lions season came to a crashing end on Monday night. They jumped out early, fell into a coma, and watched helplessly as a 180-pound kicker booted them to what will almost assuredly be another playoff-less January.
The blame game can be played until we’re blue in the face.
“Sure, the defense kept the Ravens out of the end zone...but would it kill them to force a turnover??” “How could Calvin drop those balls?” “Are there any defensive backs on the team without dreadlocks? How am I supposed to know who I’m screaming obscenities at?!?”
But the NFL has changed immeasurably over the last decade. No longer are games won with brute force and sheer aggression. Defenses have been shackled by new rules outlawing almost any contact with the passer or any significant hit to a receiver. The days of a Steel Curtain-type squad winning a bevy of Super Bowls with intimidation and physicality are long in the past. It is a finesse league. Now, more so than ever, a team’s fate is decided by one man -- the quarterback.
False Promise
Matthew Stafford is about to complete his fifth season for the Detroit Lions. And what was once considered a ridiculous notion has now become a scary reality; he might just be an average quarterback.
Strip away the background, the pedigree, the name; pretend Matthew Stafford was never the No. 1 overall pick in the NFL draft. He is simply an anonymous man with no history. Sometimes thinking this way allows you to judge a player in the most honest and unaffected context. No longer are you comparing him to Hall of Famers or expecting championships on the horizon. You are simply watching him play and letting the performance tell the story. And if you’d have watched each of the 58 starts this unknown gentleman had made over five years, it’s hard to imagine the words Super or Bowl would ever enter your mind. He has not done anything on the field that would suggest such lofty accomplishments are a realistic possibility.
For instance, take Brandon Knight’s tenure with the Pistons. Many were expecting him to be a franchise-changing point guard -- a man that would one day follow in the footsteps of Isiah Thomas and Chauncey Billups. Was this based on any type of breathtaking on-court skill that we’d witnessed? Some dramatic run of excellence where his unlimited potential was put on display? No. It was merely a byproduct of his draft position and collegiate choice.
Fans (and Joe Dumars) naturally assumed that since Knight played at Kentucky and was subsequently selected in the lottery, that he would in turn become an All-Star player. But it took all of about ten minutes to realize that this was nothing more than a middling NBA guard. The jump shot was okay. Passing skills were alarmingly absent. Intangibles like grit and leadership were found in traces rather than abundance. Thankfully, after just two seasons, Dumars swallowed his pride and dealt Knight to Milwaukee. Better to realize a mistake now than to continue hoping over the next decade for a transformation almost certain never to occur.
Which brings us back to Stafford. By now, he has put in more than enough time for a fair and proper assessment of his skills to be compiled. Is he a player that is overflowing with talent, showing flashes of greatness, with the very real chance of becoming a top-shelf QB in the near future? Or is he just a slightly better than average, run-of-the-mill NFL passer? -- a guy who has more or less shown us exactly what he is, without a whole lot more to the story. I’d venture to say it’s the latter.
What’s His Speciality?
The best quarterbacks all have a defining characteristic. Peyton Manning treats the football field like his own personal chess board, managing all of his pieces on the fly while surgically attacking the opponent’s King.
Tom Brady churns out scoring drives and playoff seasons no matter who he’s chucking the ball to. This year has proven his unmatched ability to make those around him better. His premiere targets have either left for Denver (Welker), been riddled with injuries (Gronkowski), or murdered other people (Hernandez). By comparison, Stafford was forced to play a game this year without Calvin Johnson (at GB) and the Lions practically set offensive football back a century. They scored three points in the first 58 minutes, ultimately losing by two touchdowns.
I think of Mark Brunell, the little lefty thrower for the Jaguars. He was always doing anything that he possibly could to find a W. Keeping the play alive, scrambling for crucial first downs, willing his team to victories they had no business getting. He was never the most gifted quarterback in the league, but he commanded his crew to a pair of AFC Championship games. No matter the stakes, whether the Jags were home or away, you always felt like they had a shot with Brunell.
Stafford does not possess these unique traits. He can’t survey the defense and attack accordingly like Manning. He doesn’t turn unknowns into household names like Brady. And he isn’t a bulldog like Brunell.
He is a pocket passer. He has virtually no mobility. He has a propensity for turnovers. His throwing angle is often severely flawed, too often falling in love with the sidearm whip and the back-foot special. He can rifle the ball to the sideline and fling it 60 yards in the air, but how often is that ball finding its target? How often is the ball put exactly where it should be? I’ll tell you who Matt Stafford is. He’s Carson Palmer.
Refusing to Move On
The Cincinnati Bengals played this same game for close to a decade. They drafted Palmer first overall, then sat back and waited for him to deliver a title. It never happened. There were a couple of playoff seasons, both ending with first round losses. There were some years spent teetering around .500. And there was a 4-12 mixed in for good measure. He was very good on occasion, but never with enough regularity to rationally think big things were on the horizon. Yet the city held on to that pipe dream with desperation. It was easier to just keep rolling Palmer out every year hoping for a miracle instead of making the difficult admission that he was simply not the guy they’d originally thought. After the 2010 season, the Bengals finally cut the cord and started fresh with Andy Dalton. They became a healthier franchise almost immediately and are on the verge of a third consecutive trip to the playoffs.
When you think of our infatuation with Stafford, a lot of it might have to do with the quarterbacks that preceded him. This town has seen so many horrendous quarterbacks over the years that an unspectacular player like Stafford can turn into some type of heroic figure. Remember, it was truly awful for a number of years.
There were the downright depressing Charlie Batch/Mike McMahon days. Joey Harrington looked good in his first game and then never again. Jeff Garcia was 73 years old when he got here. Jon Kitna was bad. Dan Orlovsky was worse. Daunte Culpepper tried becoming the first NFL quarterback to start a game without working knees or an active pulse.
It’s understandable that we fear putting ourselves out there again. But sometimes you have to take that leap of faith and know when it is time to give a new man a turn at the wheel.
This season has put Stafford’s mediocrity on full display. Sporting a 6-3 record, the Lions stared at a final stretch full of winnable road games and walkovers at home. The other relevant quarterbacks in the division were sidelined with various ailments. If ever there was a time for Stafford to take ownership of this team, this town, and lead a furious charge to the postseason, it was this one. The cards were dealt perfectly; he just had to play his hand right. But Monday night, like too many times in his career, he fumbled away the opportunity.
Matthew Stafford is by no means a dreadful quarterback. But he is not a memorable one, either. He is a middle-of-the-pack passer on a middle-of-the-pack-team.
And he’s never really been anything but that.
