Turf Show Times
When the Los Angeles Rams sent Jared Goff (and three draft picks) to the Detroit Lions in exchange for Matthew Stafford, Sean McVay and company thought they were acquiring the missing piece for their championship dreams. Not only were they right, but Stafford almost certainly surpassed their loftiest hopes.
By leading the Rams to a Super Bowl and winning an MVP over the past five seasons, Stafford has gone above and beyond to establish his place among the NFL’s most-respected pivots, transforming his own narrative from that of a compiler with minimal success to a legitimate Hall of Fame contender.
He’s not the first high-profile quarterback to move to another team in the second half of his career, but there aren’t many who come remotely close to matching his success. In fact, you can easily argue no quarterback has positively impacted the outside world’s perspective of their career during a second act more than Stafford has since joining the Rams.
The list below dives into the notable quarterbacks in NFL history who established a legacy with one franchise, only to make a move elsewhere to play their final seasons. Drew Brees is notably excluded because he left the Chargers after his age 26 season and spent three times as many years in New Orleans as he did San Diego. Fran Tarketon also changed teams twice and won his lone MVP at 35 years old, but spent that final tenure with the team that originally drafted him, the Vikings, so he’s out as well.
You will notice quickly that the sublist of quarterbacks even in the same zip code as Stafford’s Rams tenure is tiny.
Brady led the New England Patriots to two different dynastic championship runs, one in each half of his career with the franchise, but he departed for Tampa Bay after turmoil became too much to handle with the team that drafted him. Like Stafford (in fact, the year before Stafford did), Brady won a ring in his first year with his new team, the seventh of his career.
He put up gaudy passing numbers in his three seasons with the Bucs, too, helped in large part by incredible volume; he led the NFL in pass attempts in the last two years of his career at 44 and 45 years old. Brady didn’t rack up crazy individual honors in his second act, earning one Pro Bowl nod and a second-team All-Pro honor, both in 2021.
Whenever someone compares a modern “will he, won’t he” contract/retirement saga to Brett Favre, they’re underrating how all-consuming Brett Favre’s last days in Green Bay were. But after finally committing to play and getting shipped out, Favre was unremarkable with the Jets, starting out hot but fizzling out late in an 8-8 season.
He was legitimately great in his first year in Minnesota, finishing fourth in MVP voting and leading the Vikings to the...
