Promptly (and not coincidentally) after the Rams didn’t use a first-round draft pick on a quarterback, Matthew Stafford’s camp made it known he wants a new contract. To date, he has yet to get one.
His only leverage that doesn’t entail a potential fine consists of staying away from OTAs. For the Rams, they start Monday. So it’s fair to wonder whether Stafford will be there.
Complicating matters for the Rams is the fact that the guy who got the hot-potato-to-Detroit treatment, Jared Goff, recently got a contract worth $53 million per year in new money — and that has a practical guarantee of $148 million at signing.
Stafford specifically wants more guaranteed money beyond 2024, which would keep the Rams from cutting him after this season. (He currently has only $10 million in fully guaranteed compensation for 2025.)
The fact that Goff will get more than $75 million in cash this year becomes another potential issue for Stafford, whose payout from the Rams in 2024 is $31 million.
Earlier this month, coach Sean McVay seemed to suggest that the Rams would give Stafford the security he wants, days after tiptoeing around the issue. It hasn’t officially happened.
As folks in St. Louis know, the highest levels of the Rams’ organization is always up to something. Last year, the Rams were quietly hoping the Jets wouldn’t get Aaron Rodgers, so that they’d call about a trade for Stafford. Then, team president Kevin Demoff dismissed reports that the team had approached Stafford about re-doing his deal. Stafford amazingly (and hilariously) blew that out of the water by saying they did.
That’s surely why Stafford wants security beyond this year. The longer the Rams resist giving it to him, the more clear it becomes that they still hope to take it one year at a time with Stafford.
