As Matthew Stafford headed into the meeting that would change his life, he texted his wife, Kelly, and wrote, “Well, here we go.” The Detroit Lions president, Rod Wood, was waiting in the room. The Lions owner, Sheila Ford Hamp, was on speaker phone.
Stafford, who freely admits, “I never thought I would ever finish my career anywhere else,” had made what he calls the toughest decision of his life, to seek out a trade for a better shot at a championship. He was about to turn 33. The Lions were starting yet another upheaval — the fourth since he’d been here.