The Rams are letting Matthew Stafford flirt

With Tee Higgins set to be franchise-tagged and that development potentially removing some of the ability for us to find offseason drama, we move on to the next situation that has offered some real volatility: Los Angeles.

The Rams have told Cooper Kupp that they’d like to trade him, and now they’re telling Matthew Stafford and his agent that he can talk to other teams if he’d like. Stafford is set to average $40 million the next two seasons, a number that ranks him 15th among NFL quarterbacks per Over The Cap. Guaranteeing more of that money, as the Rams did this past year and I’m guessing would happily do again, is a nice gesture but doesn’t fix the perceived problems in value here.

The thing is, it’s not like Stafford at his best isn’t better than some of the quarterbacks ahead of him in average dollars per year at their best. Kyler Murray makes more. Trevor Lawrence makes more. But those guys are being paid for what they could be. Stafford is 37 and coming off an up-and-down season. He had six games with fewer than 200 passing yards in 2024, and two games with more than two touchdown passes. In fact, without his playoff run being fresh in everyone’s mind, I don’t think he’d be getting as much NFL Media benefit of the doubt on asking for more money.

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Stafford was tied for 10th in passing DVOA at 12.4%, but with how little the Rams threw last year I think you could make an argument that he benefitted from the run game. For Los Angeles this is probably reaching “let’s let him go a year too early rather than a year too late if the numbers are going to be onerous" stage. It’s something that is best demonstrated in recent memory by how former Rams lieutenant Kevin O’Connell let Kirk Cousins walk this past offseason.

So now we (me, Stafford, Stafford’s agent) are shopping at the market, trying to figure out what open free agency would pay someone like Stafford. The best recent comparison is, actually, Cousins. He received $100 million in guarantees on a four-year, $180 million contract. The problem is that the contract instantly blew up in Atlanta’s face and there weren’t exactly a ton of suitors for Cousins in free agency. Atlanta was almost the totality of the drumbeat for signing Cousins, with little sprinkles of Denver and Washington mixed in.

And I don’t see a huge market for Stafford. I see the Steelers get brought up often as a Stafford team, and I agree that they’re the closest playoff-positioned team that could use him. But I’m not sure what premium they’re going to want to pay for him. They just walked the late-career Roethlisberger tight rope. Arthur Smith’s system is not exactly Stafford-friendly with how much movement it emphasizes. I think the Steelers would have questions about the cost here.

I don’t know why the Giants, Titans, or Raiders want to push their timeline forward — I guess I can’t completely rule out New York because they need to win now for the head coach and GM to keep their jobs. I don’t see why the Vikings would want Stafford when the whole goal of pushing Darnold out the door is figuring out what J.J. McCarthy is. The Colts would have to entirely give up on Anthony Richardson instead of mostly giving up on Anthony Richardson and leaving the backdoor open. The Jets just failed the Old Quarterback Will Boost Franchise achievement.

None of this is to say that Stafford can’t be good next season or that one of these teams won’t trade for him. I just see situational red flags all over the place where, if I were a GM of a bad team and hoping to keep my risk level low, I don’t know that I want to give the Kirk Cousins contract to Stafford and hope it works out. And that is acknowledging that Stafford is a) a better player at his peak than Cousins and b) isn’t coming off a torn Achilles. Most of the teams that need a quarterback should be more interested in the Jared Goff scenario (take on a first-round pick, try to get more out of a talented younger quarterback who has been perceived bad) than the scenario where they try to get a playoff team together by the end of Stafford’s prime.

Would Stafford getting traded again shake up the NFL? In a way, sure. But I think it’s more telling that we haven’t exactly seen reports of huge interest or big trade offers for him at this point.

I don’t believe the Rams are trying to unload him by letting him talk to other teams so much as they’re trying to make him understand the realistic problems of the situation: Three years ago there’d be little question someone would pay you like top-five quarterback. In 2025, you’re facing a different battle. And this is no shame for Stafford, ego comes for us all.

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