INGLEWOOD, Calif. — IT MADE SENSE that Matthew Stafford’s first party as a Super Bowl champion was at a private airport, considering that 13 months ago he left for a family vacation in Cabo as a Detroit Lion and flew on a private jet to L.A. a few days later as a Los Angeles Ram. It also made sense that he took a detour on his way there. After he left SoFi Stadium on Sunday night, Stafford and his family stopped first for dinner with Cooper Kupp and his family.
That’s him: He will always pick a small private room at a restaurant with his wife and some friends for some beers and laughs over a big celebration, and this one filled not only an entire airplane hangar but also part of a runway, planes sometimes landing a little too close to the assembled crowd.
It served as a decent metaphor for the Rams’ season, actually: At times they flirted with disaster, but again and again found ways to avert it — and Stafford, calm the entire time, seemed always to know where he was going, and where he belonged.
FROM THE MOMENT Stafford arrived in L.A., he tried to ingratiate himself with his new teammates — by studying the new playbook, by hosting his linemen for dinner at his house near the Calabasas hills, and by never acting above anyone even though he was the new high-profile acquisition. He likes to gently mess with people. In Detroit, he would sometimes ask staffers to write up fake fine letters from the league office and leave them at the lockers of various teammates. Before this season in L.A., I watched as he trash-talked Kupp about his rushed signatures at a memorabilia signing — “classic receiver signature.” Tiny moments like that, locker room stuff, pushing guys and then pulling them back, helped ease the pressure of the expectation of a Super Bowl victory in Los Angeles this year.
It was a strange and intense pressure, borne of past disappointments for both the quarterback and the franchise. Stafford and head coach Sean McVay knew they had come together, knew the team had traded two first round draft picks to acquire Stafford from Detroit, for one reason. And everyone else knew it, too. Anything less than a Lombardi trophy would be a failure. It hovered over everything. On a stage in June at SoFi Stadium for a Super Bowl host committee event, announcer Kevin Frazier told McVay and Stafford, “Bring us the rings, man.”
Stafford arrived in L.A. known for throwing beautiful passes but not for winning big games. He had a singular arm — the first time Peyton Manning saw Stafford throw, at the Manning Passing Academy, he said, “Wow, that’s different” — but Stafford wanted to test himself, to play in big games. Now he had what he had asked for. Stafford tried to handle the pressure the same way he handled losing in Detroit: by pretending to ignore it, even if he knew it existed in the ether. He insulated himself. Unlike his wife, Kelly, who is generous in sharing the family’s private life on Instagram, Matthew isn’t on social media. That’s not only because he’s more reserved than her, but also because he knows himself well enough to know that he might have no impulse control and would be grabbing his phone every few minutes to check likes and comments, rather than being a dad or husband or son or friend, rather than focusing.
The Rams played well for the first two months of the season, and then, in November, hit a wall and went winless for the entire month. The strain started to show. McVay, like all ambitious coaches, is devastated by losses and often tortured in wins, leaving himself alone to throttle emotions and find a path to daylight. Stafford was more even-tempered — more “patient” than McVay, in the coach’s words. “I think there’s always pressure in this business,” McVay told me over the summer. “I think there’s always pressure in this league every single week. And I think pressure is a privilege.”
It didn’t feel that way in November, in the midst of a three-game losing streak to the Titans, 49ers and Packers. Something needed to change. Stafford and McVay sat down for what a source says was a “heart-to-heart” meeting. It wasn’t just about football. It was about trying to find a winning game plan rather than lighting up the scoreboard each time out. It was about weathering losses, something Stafford learned how to do in Detroit. A multigame losing streak in L.A. was cause for despair; in Detroit, it could happen a few times a season. “The conversation wasn’t about football,” Kelly told me. “It was about picking yourself up, knowing how to separate football from life.”
“I think I’ve learned more from him than he’s learned from me,” McVay said last week.
The offense was overhauled. The Rams started to use six offensive linemen to strengthen the run game and deployed multiple tight ends. One day McVay, Wes Phillips and Kevin O’Connell spent nine hours in meetings redesigning the offense to account for all of the new players and new ideas. From there, the Rams won nine of their final 10 games, not that all were easy. In the NFC Championship Game, the Rams trailed the 49ers by 10 in the fourth quarter. That is where everything McVay hoped that Stafford could be, and everything Stafford wanted to be, came into focus. He hit the one throw he needed to — a slant to Kupp — and the Rams won, becoming the second straight team to host the Super Bowl in its home stadium.
The Staffords stuck to their normal routine during Super Bowl week. A bunch of friends and family were in town for the game, and Kelly planned to keep them out of the house Saturday until Stafford left for the team hotel. But in the end, she gave her husband a send-off. All the visitors lined the way as Stafford walked to his black car and they cheered for him, on his way with a strong base — and due to return to them in the event of victory rather than the masses.
FOR A WHILE, it looked like Stafford was going to win the Super Bowl himself — and then, it looked like he was going to lose it himself. He hit nine of his first 10 passes for 127 yards and two touchdowns, a perfect quarterback rating of 158.3. Then the Rams hit a wall. Stafford threw two interceptions, both robbing the Rams not only of potential points but of momentum. There was a stretch in the third and fourth quarters when neither team seemed to want the game. Stafford injured his ankle and walked gingerly off the field. When Odell Beckham Jr. injured his knee, the Rams needed to find ways to win one-on-one matchups, despite the Bengals double-teaming Kupp.
The Rams took over with 6:13 left. Up in the owner’s suite, Rams COO Kevin Demoff turned to Stan Kroenke and said, “This is Matthew’s legacy right here.”
It was a legacy moment within a legacy season, and the game began to mirror many of the Rams’ from this year: Los Angeles might stall, and even go long stretches of downright ugly football, odd for a team with such star power at the skill positions, but they figured it out, barely. When the Bengals played zone, giving Kupp a free release, he and Stafford exploited it. Stafford looked left, looked right, shuffled his feet, and hit Kupp over the middle — another decisive throw over the middle, another that changed a playoff game, another that didn’t just split two defenders but also transformed Stafford’s career — and Kupp took it 22 yards to the Cincinnati 24. Nine plays later, after a grinder of a drive, Stafford hit Kupp on his back shoulder for what turned out to be the game-winning touchdown. “How clutch was this guy in all four of our playoff games?” McVay said after the game, more of a statement than a question. “He delivered in all the moments. This guy is a baller. He’s so much better than anybody thought. He’s a great one. I don’t know how he’s not a gold-jacket guy.”
An hour later, Matthew, who was still holding the game ball, Kelly and their daughters were standing in a tunnel at SoFi Stadium, staring at a golf cart that was charged with taking them to the locker room. Nobody knew where to go; the Rams were technically the visiting team in their own stadium.
“Where do we go?” Kelly asked.
The driver sat behind the wheel, waiting for instruction. Nobody was giving it. Finally, they climbed onto the cart.
“Let’s go!” Stafford said. He looked at his girls. “Same seats as the last time.”
And the cart was off.
But back in June, before anyone knew how this season would end, but everyone knew how it was expected to, Stafford spent an afternoon in the Valley signing memorabilia. He was overwhelmed at the sheer number of helmets and photos and card to sign.
“You think this is bad, wait ’til February,” a staffer said.
“Yeah?” Stafford said.
“You guys win a Super Bowl,” the staffer said, “you ain’t seen nothing yet.”
At almost 2 a.m. and party was still in full swing. The Staffords didn’t appear to have seen any of it yet. Dinner ran long, after a season that ran long. There was pressure in the air this night and all season, but there was also joy, and neither felt mutually exclusive, nor did this: Matthew Stafford, world champion.
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