A month ago, the city of Detroit finally got to see longtime Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford win a playoff game in his 13th season in the National Football League. Unfortunately it was something he had to accomplish with a different team.
That playoff win turned into one of the more impressive playoff runs we’ve seen from a quarterback in recent memory culminating in a Super Bowl victory. He beat up-and-coming star Kyler Murray and the Arizona Cardinals in the wild card round, then beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and all-time legend Tom Brady, who subsequently retired.
A victory over the San Francisco 49s in the NFC Championship game put Stafford in the Super Bowl, where he led a late drive to give his team the lead. After 12 seasons with the Detroit Lions, it only took Stafford one with the Los Angeles Rams to win a championship.
This leads to a lot of mixed feelings for Lions fans, who witnessed their team go 0-for-3 in playoff appearances during the Stafford era. Are they happy their former quarterback was finally able to win despite being with a new squad or are they upset he couldn’t get it done here in Detroit?
Senior lacrosse forward Max Payton was happy for Stafford.
“I was a big Rams fan on [Super Bowl] Sunday,” he said, noting he “couldn’t be more happy for [Stafford] and his family for finally winning after taking the heat for the past 12 years.”
Turns out Payton isn’t alone. There was plenty of interest in the big game locally.
Detroit had the second-highest rating of the more than 40 television markets measured by NBC, trailing only Cincinnati. Overall viewership of the game rose more than 16 percent nationally, NBC said, to finish at its highest point in five years.
Will Carrol, a communications major, shares the same sentiment as Payton and says he can’t think of another player who deserved the victory more than Stafford.
Carrol goes on to argue that if the Lions had kept Stafford and denied his request for a trade at the end of last season, his career would have deteriorated.
“Truth be told,” Carrol said, “If Stafford had been on the right team, Lord knows how many rings he’d have by now.”
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