Matt Stafford in Review
Last year Matt Stafford finally put it all together and stayed healthy enough to have the sort of season you’d expect from a number one overall NFL draft pick. He was a top five player overall in fantasy football leagues and propelled his team to the playoffs for the first team in years. With all of that accomplished in just his third year people imagined that Stafford would soon be one of the greats in fantasy football but unfortunately he didn’t quite get there this past season. Stafford put together a decent a campaign, an acceptable campaign, but it wasn’t a truly elite campaign. That’s the problem with players that appear to be elite. You spend a high draft pick on them in fantasy football leagues for money and if they fail to perform up to your lofty expectations they’re going to appear like busts. In reality Stafford is neither elite nor a bust.
He’s
rather just a very good fantasy quarterback that throws the ball around a lot.
He throws the ball so much that he’s almost guaranteed to break 4,500 yards
every year. In fact he set an NFL record this year for the number of passes he
threw. Nobody had ever thrown more than 700 passes in a season and until
Stafford threw for 730 this year. He’s the product of a gimmicky passing
offense that chooses not to run the ball very often. That may change in the
future with the rise of the young Mikel Leshoure but for the moment it looks
like Stafford is going to keep feeding the ball to Calvin Johnson. It’s a good
strategy if you own Stafford in fantasy football leagues but as far
as NFL success goes it leaves a little something to be desired.
The Lions would probably be best off if they just went ahead and forgot all about the outing they had in 2012. This team had a lot of potential going into the season, but they were really just one big disappointment. It remains to be seen if they can turn things around in 2013, but there are definitely some changes on the way. Detroit will be looking to get back into the playoffs next season, and as long as they have the talent surrounding them, they should get that opportunity. Look for things to change for the better when it is all said and done.