Matthew Stafford’s first season with the Los Angeles Rams couldn’t have gone any better. He quickly won over his new teammates, helping lead the Rams to a Super Bowl victory.
It’s not easy for a player to go from spending 12 years with one team to having immediate success with another one, but Stafford – like Tom Brady the year prior – wasted no time winning in Los Angeles.
Andrew Whitworth was along for the ride last season and saw firsthand just how great of a leader Stafford was with the Rams. While on “The Herd” this week, he shared a story of Stafford showing accountability and always taking the blame himself when the team made a mistake.
“One of the first times for me was our first three days of training camp,” Whitworth said. “We went out for a practice just in helmets, had like a two-minute drill and he was just on fire, hitting everything. Had a great day but there was probably a play somewhere early in practice where we messed up a cadence or didn’t get the right verbiage out on a huddle call. The next day, we’re sitting in meetings and Sean’s kind of going over and he almost stops and he’s like, ‘No, no, no. Coach, it’s my job to get that call out. That’s my bad. That’s nobody else’s fault this came out wrong and it’s only mine. Nobody else needs to be brought into this conversation. It’s on me, I got it.’ That continued every day of the season until we won the Super Bowl. He was the first guy to own everything, whether it was his fault, anybody else’s fault. It didn’t matter. He put it on himself. He always wore it, he never blamed anybody. He never asked for anybody else to take any blame. He just wanted all the pressure. He wanted all the accountability. I think when you’re wired that way and you also have talent, those kind of moments are what you’re living for. You want that football in your hand in the fourth quarter and you want a chance to prove, ‘I’m Matthew Stafford, I’m a great football player and you’re gonna know my name when this thing’s over with.’”
Whitworth retired this offseason and won’t be back for the Rams’ repeat attempt next season, but he has full confidence in Stafford as the leader in Los Angeles. There’s no reason to doubt the quarterback, either, after the season he put together in 2021.
Stafford is the ultimate leader, as evidenced in this story told by Whitworth.