Matthew Stafford is a major topic of conversation three cities right now: Los Angeles, New York, and Las Vegas. Realistically, these are the three teams, that being the Rams, Giants, and Raiders, that have the highest odds of employing Stafford for the 2025 season.
But to theorize which team is most likely to satisfy Stafford’s desire to go from $400 million career earnings to $500 million career earnings, you can’t ask the most obvious questions like, “Which teams needs Stafford more to win the Super Bowl?”
No, that’s too innocent of a view on why NFL teams pay $50 million per year for a quarterback to play a sport for their franchise.
The better question to ask would be:
Which decision-maker has the most to gain by having Matthew Stafford?
We live in a selfish world, where there is no such thing as a selfless act, so that’s the question that will answer where Stafford plays football in 2025. Who stands the most to gain PERSONALLY by coming to an agreement to pay and start Stafford next season?
Winning a Super Bowl with Stafford would only be a secondary concern for most people who run football teams. Because every GM and head coach would rather have a job in 2026, than win a Super Bowl in 2025.
Yes, winning a Super Bowl would guarantee a job. For a year. For two years. Maybe for five years*. But Stafford has to help that person have a job for years to come, whether the team wins a Super Bowl or not.
*Ask Doug Pederson. The Eagles fired him 3 years after winning the Super Bowl.
Especially since only one team can win the next Super Bowl, so the odds are stacked against Matthew Stafford — no matter where he plays football — of winning his second championship next February.
The team that acquires Stafford, or the Rams if they keep him, need to know that the decision is better for the security of their jobs. And nowhere is that question more prescient than with the New York Giants.
Does Stafford help Joe Schoen and Brian Daboll keep their jobs?
Schoen is the general manager and Daboll is the head coach of the Giants, and both know how lucky they are to still have those jobs after going 3-14 last season.
Hired in 2022 to repair a team that went 4-13 under Joe Judge and Dave Gettleman the year before, Daboll helped New York rebound to 9-7-1 and a wild card win over the Vikings in 2022 prior to then losing 38-7 to the rival Eagles.
Schoen then made a monumental mistake, or was ordered by owner John Mara, by choosing to extend quarterback Daniel Jones while only giving running back Saquon Barkley the franchise tag.
Jones, who averaged less than one touchdown pass per game in his “successful” first season with Daboll, has since thrown 10 touchdowns and 13 interceptions over 16 starts in the past two years combined.
The Giants released Jones in the middle of the 2024 season, walking away with $46 million earned from that contract extension.
Barkley became a free agent in 2024, signed with the Eagles, rushed for an NFL record 2,504 yards between the regular season and playoffs, and helped Philadelphia win the Super Bowl.
To top it all off, Schoen and Daboll’s embarrassment was on full display for the world to see on the NFL’s offseason version of Hard Knocks.
So how do these two people still have jobs?
The Malik Nabers ploy
Malik Nabers is a good player, maybe he will even become the best receiver in the NFL one day, but that’s probably not the main reason the Giants drafted him.
No, the most logical reason to draft Nabers sixth overall instead of a quarterback like Michael Penix, J.J. McCarthy, or Bo Nix is that those players would have certainly struggled as a rookie on the Giants. There was no way for the Giants to look good while playing Penix, McCarthy, or Nix at quarterback, and by proxy their numbers would have been terrible — which is the last thing that Schoen and Daboll could afford.
Similarly, a tackle like J.C. Latham or Olu Fashanu might have helped the Giants and been good long-term investments, but it’s not an easy sell to an owner that a guy without stats is actually a fantastic draft pick.
You know who is an easy sell?
A wide receiver that you can funnel the ball to 170 times.
And that’s exactly what Daboll did. Because teams do not need good quarterbacks, good tackles, or good coaches to make sure that their number one receiver gets 1,200 yards. All you really need is a gameplan that focuses on giving him the ball, even at the cost of winning games.
As such, Nabers was targeted 170 times in only 15 games, the second-most targets for ANY player in the NFL last season. Nabers even averaged more targets per game that Ja’Marr Chase, who led the NFL with 175 targets in 17 games.
As opposed to a rookie quarterback who shows progress but ends the season with 10 touchdowns and 17 interceptions (which is perfectly normal for a rookie QB, but isn’t an easy sell to an owner if you’re the head coach of a 3-14 team), on the surface Nabers seems like an easy notch on the belt for Schoen and Daboll, both of whom DESPERATELY needed some moral wins with Mara.
But if we’re being totally honest, Nabers’ stats were dramatically inflated by forcing him the ball 10-15 times per week and not giving any credence to anything other aspects of playing offense.
- He averaged just 7.1 yards per target, which is the lowest for any receiver who was targeted over 140 times, and even that number was significantly inflated by a single game:
- In Week 17, Nabers averaged 21.4 yards per target against the Colts.
- Without that game, Nabers averaged just 6.37 yards per target.
- That number would have tied Nabers with Dalton Schultz for the 183rd best yards per target in the NFL in 2024. This chart shows that as a slot player, Nabers is on par with Demarcus Robinson and Josh Palmer:
If John Mara buys that Schoen won back some brownie points because he drafted Nabers (who, again, is a perfectly good player but not because he had an inflated 1,200 yards as a rookie), it just goes to show that the objective in New York was not to win games.
That couldn’t be the case because the Giants only won 3 games.
The objective for Schoen and Daboll was to save their jobs in spite of the high probability that the Giants would be one of the worst teams in the NFL last season. They succeeded.
Now, what does any of this have to do with Matthew Stafford?
Because the Giants have to be the biggest player on the trade market for Stafford. The question is: Does trading for Matthew Stafford, who probably won’t help the Giants make the Super Bowl next season, save their jobs?
We want to know the answer to that question because it will help Rams fans gauge just how realistic it is that L.A. will be able to trade Stafford.
Does Stafford help Schoen/Daboll survive to 2026?
If they don’t get him killed in the process, then YES, Stafford probably helps Daboll and Schoen live to see another year. The GM said that the team is willing to “take swings” at the quarterback position this offseason, and there is no better or more obvious swing right now than trading for Stafford.
The questions afoot however are:
- Do the Giants want to give Stafford the contract he wants?
- Does Stafford want to play in New York, in the winter, outdoors?
- Is Cooper Kupp coming with him?
- Do the Rams want to trade Stafford without a guaranteed first round pick coming back to L.A.?
Contrary to the Raiders situation, which should have a more long-term outlook when it comes to their next quarterback, or the Browns, who don’t have any money, the Giants have a very short-term outlook when it comes to their next move at the position.
Because Schoen and Daboll can’t convince Mara that what they do at QB will work “in 2-3 years”. No, they need something to work now.
The Giants have been the worst team in the NFL over the past 12 years, losing at least 10 games in nine of those seasons and finishing in last place in four of the last eight.
Despite winning a playoff game in 2022, the Giants haven’t had a positive point differential since 2016 (a whopping +26 under Ben McAdoo) and they’ve been -141 and -142 in the past two seasons.
Mara is past the point of thinking that “a little bit of progress each year” will work for the Giants, so Stafford presents as the most obvious solution to going from 3-14 to contending for a wild card spot and maybe pulling off 1-2 upsets if they get that far.
It’s not going to be Sam Darnold.
It’s not going to be Shedeur Sanders.
It’s not going to be Russell Wilson.
It’s not going to be Geno Smith.
None of the other options who are available or probably available are going to move the needle as much as Stafford. Even if Stafford can’t single-handedly make the Giants a Super Bowl contender, he’s the only former Super Bowl winner out there who has a case to be a top-10 QB next season.
But be realistic: Not even the Giants are going to trade the third overall pick for a 37-year-old quarterback who is frustrated with his contract.
What are the Rams willing to accept?
If the Rams are not going to get a first round pick in 2025 for Stafford, then they have to try to reach his contract demands and keep him in-house for the next couple of seasons, at least.
And that makes sense because of all the teams in the NFL, the Rams are still one of the three that need him the most right now.
They also still have all the leverage because Stafford has let it be known that he wants to continue playing and he’s under contract with the Rams. If he can’t be traded, Stafford can either play or choose to be the only “franchise QB” in history who held out into the regular season over money.
So the Rams should not feel pressured to trade Stafford if they don’t have a new contract in place.
However, it might make everyone happier if they did. They’re just not going to get the third overall pick if they do. So what are they willing to accept?
Giants 2nd round pick (34th overall)
The absolute least we should expect is New York’s second round pick, which lives just below the end of the first round. Truth be told, this is not a very valuable pick, but the Rams don’t have a second round pick right now so it would be a step in the right direction.
Giants 3rd round pick (65th overall)
In 2021, the Rams traded a second and a third for Von Miller, but they went on to win the Super Bowl, so by comparison that’s more like trading a 3rd and a 4th, not a 2nd and a 3rd.
Would the Rams be compelled to trade Stafford if they went from having one pick on the top-89 (their third round is 90th overall) to having four picks in the top-90?
Would the Giants be motivated to start the bidding at a second and a third if it meant that they could use the third overall pick on a non-QB and have Matthew Stafford?
Would Stafford feel better about going to New York if the Giants paid him what he wanted and also used the third overall pick on acquiring more offensive talent to support him? With their position, the Giants could trade down — now knowing they have a QB — and use those picks on a right tackle, a tight end, a running back, a receiver, etc. The Giants could then wait for the Rams to release Cooper Kupp — or make a lowball offer — and reunite him with Stafford and pair him with Nabers in 2025.
It’s a great deal for the Giants, but is it even a good deal for the Rams?
Does this trade help the Rams replace Stafford?
Not at all.
That’s why the Rams would have to fish around and convince Schoen that if Stafford helps the Giants make the playoffs, then L.A. wants their first round pick in 2026.
And because Schoen is simply in survival mode right now, he might be compelled to give it to him. He doesn’t have very many other options other than Stafford to save his job.
The final offer:
The Giants get: Matthew Stafford
The Rams get: 2.34 and 3.65 in the 2025 draft and a conditional first round pick in 2026 (second if Stafford misses more than 30% of the season OR the Giants miss the playoffs)
Stafford would then sign a three-year, $150 million extension with $100 million guaranteed. The Giants would work to acquire Kupp, and in the draft they would trade down with the Jets to recoup some draft picks and select an offensive lineman like Armand Membou or a tight end like Tyler Warren.
For a team that scored 266 points (30th) in 2023 and 273 points (31st) in 2024, adding Stafford, Kupp, and Warren to the offense should move the Giants back up the rankings considerably year-over-year, and that’s more than enough to Mara to be duped into believing the Giants are in good hands with Daboll and Schoen.
If they make the playoffs, then they make the playoffs. But if they miss the playoffs, they’ll still have their first round pick in 2026.
Maybe the Rams would even include Kupp in the deal and eat more salary just to help New York get over the hump to make the playoffs because L.A. will really want that extra first rounder in 2026 in order to be in position to draft a quarterback.
Because at the end of the day, any trade or contract for Stafford is not about winning the Super Bowl. It’s about keeping their jobs. This would be a good deal for the Giants. It would only be a good enough deal for the Rams if Stafford can’t agree to a reasonable contract offer, in which case the quarterback was the one who forced them to take the best offer. It won’t get much better than this.
