by Paul Teetor
Pro football is back! Yay!
Amazingly, summer is almost over already. Boo!
That means there’s only two weeks to go before opening night. On September 7, the defending Super Bowl champs, the Kansas City Chiefs, will take on the Detroit Lions, led by Jared Goff, who may have the last laugh on his former team, the Los Angeles Rams.
Three days later, the Chargers take on the Miami Dolphins while the Rams face the Seattle Seahawks. The Chargers prognosis is sunny with a chance at a Super Bowl while the Rams is…. well, cloudy with a chance of meatballs.
Goff, you may recall, cost the Rams two number one draft picks and a whole bunch of lower round picks so they could move up and take him first overall in the 2016 draft.
His rookie year under Coach Jeff Fisher was a mess, but most of the blame fell on Fisher, who was soon fired.
When new Coach Sean McVay was hired as the youngest head coach in NFL history — and an alleged offensive genius — Goff was given a mulligan, a do over on his rookie year.
And it worked out great – at first.
The team of McVay and Goff got them to the Super Bowl in 2018, but they did not score a single touchdown once there and ended up losing to the Patriots 12-3 in one of the least exciting title games on record – with Goff taking most of the blame for the anemic offense.
The next season it got even worse. The Rams finished 9-7, and didn’t even make the playoffs.
In the 2020 season they lost in the divisional round to Green Bay, but even before that McVay had publicly soured on Goff. After the season ended, McVay was asked if Goff was still the starting quarterback for the Rams.
“He is for today,” McVay said.
With that unsubtle hint hanging in the air, a few days later Goff, still only 26, was traded, along with a boatload of draft picks, to Detroit for quarterback Matthew Stafford.
Stafford, who had been great for more than a decade but hadn’t won a single playoff game for Detroit, represented a huge gamble for McVay and the Rams. But it paid off big time when he led them to a Super Bowl title in 2021 – at SoFi Stadium, which made the fairytale complete.
Everything went just right on their playoff run with Stafford, 33, leading the offense and All Pro nose tackle Aaron Donald leading the defense.
McVay and General manager Les Snead were hailed as geniuses for pulling off the Goff-for-Stafford trade. McVay, Snead, Stafford and Donald were all given huge contract extensions for winning the Super Bowl. Following the weeks-long celebration, it was thought that the Rams were set up as Super Bowl contenders for at least the next several years.
Instead, the Rams fell flat on their faces and posted the worst season-after record ever by a Super Bowl champ – 5 and 12. Even worse, Goff and the Lions posted a winning record and Goff had a better year than Stafford. Some football analysts even said he was in the top 10 of quarterbacks while Stafford was nowhere close to top 10.
Bluntly put, McVay and Snead were now looking like dopes for trading Goff for Stafford. Only the Super Bowl win made it semi-palatable at all. But that was two seasons ago, and already Rams fans are asking the age-old question: what have you done for me lately?
Now the Rams whole season is riding on Stafford, who is supposedly over his elbow and back problems. But when you’re 35 you’re just one brutal hit away from being knocked out for the season — and maybe for the rest of your career.
But Stafford isn’t buying it.
“I feel a lot better physically. I feel really healthy compared to where I was at this point last year,” Stafford said. “I was able to get the work in that I wanted to get in coming into this year and that makes it a whole lot more fun for me and I’m just excited to get out here and play.”
Despite all the happy talk, the reality is that the Rams tried to dump Stafford in the off-season but could find no takers – mainly because of the $57 million he still has coming thanks to the huge extension they gave him in the after-glow of the Super Bowl title win.
McVay admitted that there were trade talks about Stafford, but insisted it was the other way around – teams were asking the Rams about him.
A key date: March 17, when the $57 million became fully guaranteed.
“There was a consistent dialogue of when that March deadline came in terms of him being due the bonus that he’s earned, we were all in unanimous agreement that we wanted him to be the quarterback. We’re excited as hell about Matthew Stafford. It’s been great to see him feeling good. I’m certainly really glad he’s our quarterback and that’s where we’re at.”
Translation: we tried to trade him but the money was just too much for other teams to absorb. So we’re stuck with him and we’ll hope he can make lightning strike again. And we’ll hope he stays healthy – or at least upright – long enough for us to get into the playoffs.
They better be hopeful: there’s not much behind him except 25-year-old rookie Stetson Bennett, who was drafted in the fourth round after leading Georgia to two consecutive national championships.
But at barely six feet tall he was not considered one of the top college quarterbacks, more of a game manager than a super stud who can carry a team. Still, in Saturday night’s first exhibition game between the Rams and the Chargers he connected on 17 out of 29 passes for one touchdown and looked good for a guy seeing his first pro action. The 34-17 loss to the Chargers could not be pinned on Bennett.
The Chargers, on the other hand, are everything the Rams are not. They have a top-5 quarterback in Justin Herbert just entering his prime at age 25. And he has weapons all around him, from versatile running back Austin Ekeler, to veteran wide receivers Keenan Allen, and Mike Williams. This is a team that should be a Super Bowl contender.
All Ball isn’t going to venture a season-long prediction for either team yet, except to say this: it’s a good thing for the Rams that the Chargers are not on their schedule this year.
Pickleball fundraiser for MCHS girls basketball
The Mira Costa girls basketball program has come up with a brilliant idea for a fundraiser. Instead of selling the usual cookies and doughnuts, or lemonade, or car washes, they have latched onto the hottest sport around. They will hold a pickleball tournament on August 26 at the Manhattan Beach Middle School. Proceeds will benefit the Mira Costa Girls Basketball program. There are beginner, intermediate and advanced divisions, as well as Open Doubles. Contact Coach Jeff Herdman with any questions at jherdman11@me.com.
Contact: teetor.paul@gmail.com. Follow: @paulteetor. ER
