After a hot start to the 2021 season, Los Angeles Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford has fallen back down to earth at a bad time.
Stafford had been playing like an MVP candidate, but has been turnover prone during the course of the Rams’ three-game losing streak. In their recent loss to the Green Bay Packers, Stafford lost a fumble and committed a pick-six for the third consecutive week.
Head coach Sean McVay was asked when he would publicly call out Stafford like he did Jared Goff last season, but seemed to take offense at the notion, via Cameron DaSilva of USA Today:
“What are you trying to – listen, this is a team game, all right? I’m not interested in revisiting the past and some of the things that haven’t always gone the way that we’ve wanted to,” McVay said. “There’s a lot of different snaps, there’s a lot of things that he’s done at a high level. When you want to just isolate those individual plays, of course we want to be able to play better. It’s not always exclusively on him. We’ve got a guy that’s got great ownership, I’ve got great confidence in this guy and I’m not gonna sit here and criticize our players. I’m gonna be able to look at it, try to say, ‘Hey, here’s where we can fix it, here’s where we can correct it’ and that’s where I feel like my job is as a coach. I don’t mean to get upset, but this is a very important thing to all of us. I have total confidence and belief in Matthew Stafford and I think the narrative – everyone wants to throw out six turnovers, all of those have a totally different story and not all of those are his fault. This is a great team game. We’re gonna stay connected. There’s a lot of things that I get frustrated because I feel responsible for some of those spots that our players are in and I want to do better for them as well. So that’s why you get me stirred up a little bit but I don’t ever mean to feel like if my tone is in a disrespectful manner, I apologize for that.”
McVay has previously expressed his confidence in Stafford despite his struggles, and this is his strongest endorsement yet. While frustrations might be mounting about the Rams’ poor play, there is no reason to believe that McVay is anywhere close to out on Stafford.
With the Rams sitting at 7-4, there is still time to turn things around, and next week’s matchup with the Jacksonville Jaguars gives them a prime opportunity to get right.
