NFL Top 10 Series: Quarterbacks - #10

Welcome one and all to the much talked about and much anticipated (maybe not so much) debut of the NFL Top 10 Series. We’ve gone through the motions since the middle of the month of April with honorable mentions posts, which if you’re reading this post right now you have probably read through most if not all of them, and now that the calendar has switched from May to June, it is time for this thing to kick off. And what a better place to start than with quarterbacks, right? The most important position on the football field, arguably, and it is the one that usually determines champions, and contenders from pretenders.  With that all said and out of the way, it’s time to delve right into the mess. Shall we?

 Quarterback #10 – Matthew Stafford, Detroit Lions

It took three seasons, but Matthew Stafford made the Detroit Lions look very smart for taking him #1 overall in the 2009 NFL Draft.  

The 2008 season for the Detroit Lions was an unwatchable and unbelievable disaster, and that might be putting it very lightly. After an offseason that was littered with hype around them, with hints of the p-word, and a guarantee from Jon Kitna, the first blow was struck in Week 1 when the at-the-time lowly Atlanta Falcons blew by them faster than a Pontiac G6 (Haha, a GM joke. Get it?). It reached its pinnacle in Week 17 when the 5-10 Green Bay Packers struck the Lions with their sixteenth consecutive loss. The Lions were now the only team to go 0-16 through a regular season, an embarrassing mark on a team that had suffered so many embarrassments ever since the great Barry Sanders retired almost a decade earlier. The Motor City needed something to invest their hope in as it seemed like between the Lions fading, and their economy going down the gutter, they needed a hero.

Enter Matthew Stafford.

The Georgia Bulldog was selected first overall by the Detroit Lions in the 2009 NFL Draft and a massive amount of high hopes were placed on the back of the 6’2” 232 lbs. Tampa, Florida native with a cannon for an arm. Scouts loved his arm coming out of college, the fact that he played in a pro-style offense at UGA and played well in it too. There was of course, one blip on the radar that eventually showed up. That was the fact that Matthew Stafford could be described as being made of glass, and his rookie year showed just that. He only played ten games in the regular season, and followed that up with just three in 2010. Some Lions fans were even wondering whether or not Stafford was ever going to be a legitimate starter or whether he’d be another case of bad luck that they had felt for years now.

I guess 2011 changed that process.

Stafford played his first full season as an NFL starting quarterback, and needless to say he made the absolute most of it. He threw for a ridiculous 5,038 yards, with a 63.5 completion percentage, on 663 attempts and found the endzone 41 times and only threw 16 interceptions. Matt was one of the reasons that the Detroit Lions made the playoffs for the first time in over a decade and in that game against the New Orleans Saints, he did not do so bad, throwing for 380 yards and 3 touchdowns while completing 28 passes on 43 attempts (65.1%).

So after a ridiculously good season, why is Matthew Stafford only 10th on this list?

Easy. It’s one season.

Beforehand it did not appear to me that Matthew Stafford belonged in this group of players. Sure, he flashed potential, but his injuries have hampered him and that is something you need to take into account with these lists and when discussing who is better than whom. While Matt didn’t have any problems with his shoulder this season he did suffer a lot if problems when he hurt his throwing hand and also his thumb in 2011, so that was certainly one of very few missteps that occurred for him. 

One good season doesn’t automatically make you an elite quarterback but it can show that you have a lot of promise and a lot of potential. That’s what people thought about Stafford from the get-go, right? 

Also, with all due respect to Stafford, his numbers may look quite inflated due to the 663 attempts (which led the league) and also having Calvin Johnson as your #1 target to throw to really helps him too, and Calvin’s yard total was roughly 33% of Stafford’s yard total. I’d like to see him really diversify himself and throw to more receivers, but hey, we won’t penalize him that much, but it is something to take into account.

Nonetheless, Stafford could very well shoot up the board next season with another really good performance. He could also tumble down in the players behind him play well enough to surpass him. The jury’s still out on Stafford as a whole, but I didn’t feel right to put him anywhere else but at the ten spot.