INGLEWOOD, Calif. — This is the Super Sunday that Matthew Stafford has only been able to see in a distance, if he could see it at all.
Joe Burrow is the supernova exploding in the NFL galaxy, illuminating a Bengals franchise in a way that only a star phenom franchise quarterback can.
Motown begged Stafford to drive a broken-down Ford to its first Super Bowl championship, and for 12 long years he sure tried. And only now that he is behind the wheel of Sean McVay’s Tesla has he been afforded the luxury of flooring the gas pedal on the Hollywood Freeway and leave his unfulfilled past in the rearview mirror.
This is the day when he can change the narrative.
This is the day when he can give himself the chance to be remembered as more than a good quarterback with the great arm.
This is Stafford’s “Legacy Game.”
It’s a game that can possibly help carry him all the way to Canton one day.
McVay lost a Super Bowl three years ago with Jared Goff at quarterback and decided he had a much better chance to win one with Matthew Stafford.
And here he is.
Here they are.
Stafford, 34 years old now, deserves this moment, this one shining moment that can define his career more than the previous 12 years as the quarterback of the Detroit Lions, with which he could not win a single playoff game.
But he can’t lose this game.
McVay mortgaged yet another piece of the Rams’ future for Stafford to win this game for him and for the franchise.
This is Stafford’s moment to seize the moment, to stand tall and refuse to let the moment seize him.
This is Stafford’s moment of truth.
Stafford has answered the bell in the postseason — 72 percent completion rate, six touchdowns, one interception. But he can’t lose this game and hope the detractors will ever stop calling him Stat Padford.
He was Burrow once, the Young Gun-derkind, the first-overall pick of the 2009 draft, asked to lift a woebegone franchise out of a deep, dark hole. He threw for 5,038 yards in his third year but never really had enough help — on the field or off — for it to matter.
He titillated the long-suffering Lions fans with a better fastball than his football center at Highland Park High School in Dallas, Clayton Kershaw, owns even now on the mound, made them roll their eyes when the gunslinger in him betrayed him (23 pick-sixes) … which occasionally it has even this season.
Ready to start your Super Bowl 2023 betting?
- Read the latest Super Bowl betting news and views
- Get up to $16,000 in bonuses from the best betting sites in the USA
- Download our expert’s top sports betting apps
- Take advantage of these sportsbook promo codes
His college sweetheart wife, Kelly, endured a 12-hour surgery for a brain tumor nearly three years ago. There was so much for him to endure. He endured.
“A guy’s guy,” Rams left tackle Andrew Whitworth told The Post. “He’s one of those people that he’s not just a superstar football player, he’s full man, and he is as tough and as cold, calm and collected as there is, and wants the moment. He wants the ball in his hand, and he wants all the pressure. It almost makes him more fired up and more inspired. Just a guy’s guy, man, he’s what every guy wants a guy to be: ‘I want the moment to be mine, and I want the pressure.’ ”
That is the way he is remembered from his University of Georgia days. Tripp Chandler was a tight end when Stafford was a freshman.
“We were playing at Kentucky,” Chandler told The Post, “and we were trying to make a game-winning drive, and Matthew ran the ball on that last drive, and as he was going to the ground, he got a face-mask, and it was such a face-mask that it pulled his helmet off as he was going to the ground. And as he hit the ground, another player was coming in from Kentucky, and hit him face-mask-to-face. And it sliced the tip of his nose and cut him pretty good on the tip of his nose, busted his lip. … 2006 it was OK, and now he would not have stayed in the game. He got a huge bump on the front of his head, and then his nose was cut, his lip’s busted. We’re all screaming on the sidelines and on the field wanting a call that we didn’t end up getting.
“But Matthew didn’t say a word about it, he didn’t throw his hands up in the air, he just kind of got up and split the blood out of his mouth, put his helmet back on, because the task at hand was still the task at hand — which was: He was trying to win the game.”
Former Georgia fullback Brannan Southerland remembers how Stafford’s competitive greatness was infectious in 2007.
“We dropped a couple of games early that we really shouldn’t have, and even him in his second year, he was a leader beyond his years,” Southerland told The Post. “He had confidence that you would expect from, say, a fourth-year or fifth-year senior that are commanding the offense. He had great football IQ even coming out of high school.”
Chandler referenced Stafford, as a rookie in 2009, throwing a game-winning 1-yard TD pass to tight end Brandon Pettigrew against the Browns … with a separated shoulder.
“It was my left shoulder,” Stafford said afterward, “and I don’t really need it to throw.”
Stafford never wanted to be the talk of his town. Just the talk of his team. Burrow has all the nicknames, and the swag, and the bling. Stafford — the “other quarterback” — doesn’t need any nickname. Just a Lombardi Trophy.
“The thing about Matthew,” Southerland said, “is he’s just a humble guy. He doesn’t love the spotlight, he never has. And I think that that’s what people like about him: He just wants to play football and doesn’t necessarily want to be in the spotlight all the time.”
Jim Plunkett, the first-overall pick of the 1971 draft, didn’t win his first Super Bowl until he was 33, with his third team.
Better late than never for Matthew Stafford.
Better late than never on Sunday. Better late than never on Super Sunday.
