Why Matthew Stafford is not tradeable

The Los Angeles Rams may hate money. I don’t think they hate money so much that they would trade Matthew Stafford during the 2024 season, however.

Despite a lot of perfectly reasonable people coming up with perfectly reasonable reasons for the Rams to trade Stafford should the Rams continue to lose—whether those reasons actually exist in NFL and L.A.’s front office notwithstanding—the truth of the matter is that there are just too many obstacles between that future possibility and this current reality that we live in.

Now, I would add in there that if the Rams lose, trade rumors won’t go away. Does that really bother you more than the Rams...losing their way into baseless (or based) trade speculation?

So some people, mostly Rams fans, want to be able to fantasize about some out-there trades that would distract from the fact that the team is 1-4 with arguably the league’s worst defense. It should not offend the Rams fans who don’t want to do that. Both should be able to co-exist, even if one-in-50 articles about the team addresses the possibility of trading a player such as Stafford, or rumors that started at ESPN, or someone who just wants to lay out the pros and cons of making such a move.

That should not really bother anyone and that’s with me writing this very article saying that trade rumors almost certainly aren’t going to lead to any trade in 2024.

However, I will say that if you write a headline like this one at TWSN by Grayson Hodges:

“The Rams will trade Matthew Stafford to the Dolphins”

Then fair enough, that writer is clickbaiting you. We could get into a whole other 1,000 words talking about the differences between clickbait vs. an unpopular opinion or a rumor that may offend you (that headline is a LIE, whereas the headlines at TST are just “This is what happened” or “This is what somebody said” or “This is my opinion” and that’s not a lie, even if you disagree with someone’s “hot take” or don’t think the rumors are warranted) but that’s for another day.

But are you mad at the fact that national writers and podcasters are talking about the Rams trading Stafford or are you mad at the Rams for letting it get to the point this season where ESPN and Fox Sports and anyone with a Twitter account is ALLOWED to talk about the team trading its quarterback without getting any pushback? Because they also want to fantasize and engage people with talking about something that they want to talk about...like juicy trade possibilities.

It’s actually not even coming from the Rams side as much as any team with a QB problem is going to ask the same question: “Who is the worst team with the best QB?”

Well, the Rams wouldn’t be that team if they were not 1-4. You can blame that on injuries, it doesn’t change the fact that trade rumors will ALWAYS swirl around bad teams. Always. That’s how it works.

Even though—as you know—the Rams are not going to trade Matthew Stafford unless something totally unprecedented happens. It requires a perfect storm and some reason for the Rams to trade Stafford for a bad return, cap hell, and no clear path towards winning this trade.

Why would the Rams do that?

As I stated in the beginning, the Rams hate money. Wait, let me re-phrase that:

The Rams LOVE money. They can’t get enough of it. Stan Kroenke eats $40 bills for breakfast, a note you’d only know about if you were a billionaire. All 32 teams love money. All 32 owners and ownership groups love money. They moved to L.A. because of money. Stan Kroenke and his business partners are certainly doing business in the NFL with the intent to make money.

So trading Stafford could require Kroenke to write a check over $15 million to Stafford to get another team to be willing to trade for him in the middle of a season. Essentially, L.A. needs to most likely restructure his 2024 base salary into a signing bonus, lower his cap hit, and make him tradeable. I know, $15 million to Stan Kroenke and the Rams is nothing, they’ll spend more than that on the worst receiver in the NFL.

Photo by John McCoy/Getty Images

But look at all the steps that would happen:

• Give Stafford another $15 million+ after already re-doing his contract to pay him $5 million guaranteed upfront, just so he can play for another team
• Trade Stafford to a team that wants him
• Trade Stafford for a package of draft picks that a team is willing to give up for a 36-year-old QB in the middle of a season and needing weeks, or months, to get him up to speed
• Take on $60 million of dead money on Stafford’s contract in 2025 and 2026

And that last line is the real kicker.

Look, when I say that the Rams “hate money”, I mean that they’re willing to spend a lot of it to make the team better in free agency and trades every year. They’re willing to spend money to make money and it worked out very well for Kroenke by moving the team to L.A. and winning a Super Bowl. But they still need to have money to spend money and if they trade Stafford, they lose, lose, lose a lot of money. And cap space.

If the Rams had a good young quarterback on the roster already, like what Brock Purdy was to the 49ers when they parted with Jimmy Garoppolo and Trey Lance, then you could argue that the dead money problem doesn’t hurt as much because the new QB would essentially be the one “making” the $60 million. In spirit. He doesn’t actually make it. But the allocation to a QB makes sense IF you have a quarterback.

The Rams don’t have a blossoming franchise QB behind Stafford. They have Garoppolo and Stetson Bennett. They could tank, try to lose the rest of their games, get the number one pick, and STILL not have a quarterback next year.

Do the Rams want to give Stafford more free money? No. Does another team want to pay the remaining $17 million of his contract? No, they really do not want to do that and most teams can’t do that. Right away you have a HUGE impasse to a trade.

Then, does a team want to give up a first for Stafford? No. Do the Rams want to trade Stafford for a third? No. That’s your second HUGE impasse.

Next, can the Rams afford to trade Stafford? Yes, but not really. They could technically afford it, with or without a restructure, but if they wait until 2025 to discuss trades, it makes much better sense for L.A.. They’d know what draft picks they’re getting, they could get better draft picks, and they’d save a shit ton more money in dead space in 2025 and 2026. It’s as simple as that.

The Rams should and would rather pay Stafford to play for the Rams in 2024 than to pay him the same amount to play for one of their rivals. (Yes, all 31 teams should be considered your rivals. Just remember that the Packers traded Brett Favre to the Jets to get him out of the NFC and the next year he was playing for the Vikings....and beating the Packers.)

Is it stupid to think about trading Stafford? Is it dumb to wonder what it would take and if it would help the Rams in the long-term? No. Not to me it isn’t. This is part of being a fan. This is part of being a human. We’re just trying to get through each day and when the team you root for is 1-4, for some people they just want to imagine any possible way out of this situation in order to have hope tomorrow. If we’re lucky to even see tomorrow.