Matthew Stafford Announces Plans To Return For 2026 Season

Rams QB Matthew Stafford announced during his 2025 MVP speech that he will return to the team for the 2026 season. 

Retired has been a topic of discussion regarding Stafford the last few years, but he played incredible well this past season and managed to secure the Most Valuable Player of the Year award, despite serious concerns about his back leading up to the regular season. 

Stafford’s back was bad enough that he had practiced during training camp until the start of the regular season. Thankfully for him it wasn’t as bad as it seemed and he was able to finish out the year without any serious setbacks. 

Stafford, 37, is a former first-round pick of the Lions, who took him with the No. 1 overall pick out of Georgia in 2009. He was in the final year of a five-year, $76.5 million contract when he and the Lions agreed to a five-year, $135 million extension back in 2017.

Stafford was involved in a blockbuster trade that sent him to the Los Angeles Rams in exchange for QB Jared Goff and draft picks in 2021. He signed a four-year extension worth $160 million that included $135 million guaranteed a year later. 

The Rams and Stafford later reworked that deal going into the 2024 season, moving money up from the back of the contract. Stafford was due $27 million and $31 million in the final two years of his deal when the two sides reworked his existing contract again in 2025. 

In 2025, Stafford appeared in all 17 games for the Rams and threw for 4,707 yards while completing 65.0 percent of his passes for 46 touchdowns and eight interceptions.