Early Friday morning, as Los Angeles Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford was preparing for a meeting with head coach Sean McVay, a league source with significant interest in this offseason’s QB carousel offered a prediction and theory on the story that had dominated the start of the NFL scouting combine: Stafford and the Rams would stay together in 2025; a financial middle ground would be found; and while Stafford would never say it publicly, the compromise would showcase that sometimes elite players do learn from the mistakes of their peers.
In this case Stafford wasn’t going to fall into the same trap that has swallowed some of the precious final years of Aaron Rodgers’ career, leaving the future Hall of Famer in search of a way to bookend his NFL legacy with something other than his spectacular failure with the New York Jets.