Rams QB Matthew Stafford isn’t just having a great season. He’s having an MVP one
Nate Atkins
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6772158/2025/11/03/rams-matthew-stafford-mvp-season/?source=athletic_user_shared_article_copylink&smid=url-share-ta
INGLEWOOD, Calif. — Los Angeles Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford dropped back from under center, saw a New Orleans Saints defense sitting in zone and knew he needed to do something about the linebacker staring him down.
So Stafford locked his eyes on the checkdown option of Kyren Williams to his short right. And then his arm did something else. The ball moved independent of his eyes, as if controlled by two of its own, flying just over the head of the linebacker staring at Williams and into the arms of Davante Adams for a 29-yard gain.
This is Stafford at age 37. The game is so easy for him, he doesn’t even have to look.
What happened on Sunday, in a 34-10 win over the Saints to move the Rams to 6-2, is not necessarily different than before. After all, Stafford famously hit Cooper Kupp on a no-look pass on a drive to win Super Bowl LVI. His field vision is among the next-level traits the Rams coveted when they traded Jared Goff and two first-round picks to land him.
But this is the best, most comfortable version of Stafford. The one the Rams hoped he’d get back to after his offensive line collapsed in 2022 and the receiving corps limped to the finish line last year. The one they prayed would be healthy enough this season after they sat him for weeks in training camp to manage a degenerative back issue.
Eight games later, the question has shifted from whether Stafford still has it physically to keep playing to whether he can win his first MVP award.
Beyond the highlights of no-look passes, unique arm angles and window-shredding velocity, the case is in the numbers. He leads the NFL with 21 touchdown passes, and his touchdown-to-interception ratio of 21:2 is one of the five best marks of any quarterback in the first half of a season.
With a quarterback rating of 113.2, Stafford is enjoying the best start to a season in his career.
What’s scary for the rest of the league is that he’s getting better by the week.
Through the first month, Stafford was playing at a high level, but he did throw two rough interceptions and missed some passes that could have beaten the Philadelphia Eagles due to what he labeled as “physical issues.”
It was a sharp version of a 17-year veteran, but he saw room for growth. He lamented missing Adams in the end zone and said he was the one to blame, despite what the numbers showed. The Rams were moving the ball at will with that version of Stafford, but they left something to be desired on third downs and in the red zone.
In the past two games, Stafford has nine touchdown passes and zero interceptions, marking the first back-to-back four-touchdown performances of his career. The Rams found the end zone on eight of nine red zone trips and beat the Jacksonville Jaguars and Saints by a combined score of 69-17.
And in those games, coach Sean McVay noticed something happening on offense: an identity forming, a game plan following suit and a confidence building in his own situational decisions.
“It’s been a good example of a lot of our practice preparation, practice performance equaling game reality,” McVay said. “There was a good sense of urgency, a good enjoyment for the appropriate urgency in that balance of enjoying it.”
Three noticeable shifts have taken place within the offense in that time:
The connection with Adams arrived, diversifying the passing game beyond Puka Nacua. Scoring touchdowns is what Adams has always done, and Sunday’s pair tied him with Tony Gonzalez for eighth in NFL history with 111.
It turned out that Nacua’s week off was a blessing in disguise. Left to their own devices for a week in Baltimore, the two poured everything into their connection. And now, they’re communicating at the line of scrimmage, targeting the mismatches they see and chasing places in history together in a joint race against time.
“I have a ton of trust and respect in his aptitude to go out there and play and his mental capabilities,” Stafford said. “It’s a whole lot of fun. When he’s talking to me, he’s giving me great information and we’re just trying to collaborate and make sure that we’re on the same page as much as possible.”
The Rams are playing two- and three-tight end sets more than ever under McVay. That’s fit this year’s shift to more under-center and play-action passing, but now it’s created an element of surprise to the defense that moving Nacua around before the snap never could. Before the past two games, Nacua and Adams were in the top 10 in the NFL in targets. But in each of those games, Stafford completed passes to at least seven different players.
On Sunday, the Rams used three tight ends on 35 of their 77 plays, with a success rate of 51 percent in those looks, according to the NFL’s Next Gen Stats. It’s created an environment where they can hide some of Terrance Ferguson’s rookie deficiencies as a blocker before unleashing his receiving talent, which turned into two catches for 54 yards against the Saints.
The third shift is that Stafford has an offensive line that is finally healthy. From the very first game until now, the unit has seen constant shuffling at three positions as left guard Steve Avila and right tackle Rob Havenstein both missed three games. Sunday represented the first time they’ve had all five out there since Week 1, and it was the first game where all five played the entire time. Stafford took two sacks but just four total hits. His sack rate over the past two games is a minuscule 3 percent. And now, his season-long sack rate of 4.5 percent is his lowest since 2013, or eight years before the Detroit Lions traded him to the Rams.
Much like Tom Brady and Peyton Manning in their late 30s, Stafford has reached a point where his experience dwarfs that of younger defenders, making his offense a nightmare to defend. Especially when the individual pieces are as difficult to handle as Adams and Nacua are, and as Ferguson is showing flashes of becoming.
“It’s just great command, great understanding of what he’s seeing, great ability to be able to distribute the ball based on what the coverage dictates,” McVay said. “I think he’s pushing the ball. I think he’s understanding situationally what’s the right way to be able to play it. I just have total confidence where you can call the game through him.”
