Matthew Stafford has a lot of gaudy stats and records on his resume, which is what happens when you play on a team that has Calvin Johnson and a lousy running game. Stafford has even taken the Detroit Lions to the postseason on two occasions, and while he didn't win either game, that's not a huge knock when the franchise has only one playoff win since 1957.
Matthew Stafford looking for 1st big upset in 14 tries when Lions visit Seahawks
Stafford is 0-13 when the Lions are underdogs by a touchdown or more.
Bruce Kluckhohn-USA TODAY Sports
The one thing Stafford has never done, though, is pull off a major upset. Monday night, with the Seahawks favored by 10 points against the NFL's last winless team, he will get another chance.
According to ESPN, Monday night will be the 14th time that he and the Lions have gone into a game with the opposing team favored by at least a touchdown. Thus far, Stafford is 0-for-13 in those games.
He's never really come close, either. In those 13 matchups, the Lions have gone 1-11-1 against the spread. In 2009, they lost 27-10 to the Vikings as a 17-point underdog and 23-13 to the Bengals, who were favored by 13.5 points. In the other 11 games, they were expected to lose by an average of 9.5 points, and were actually beaten by an average score of 34-18.
Date | Opponent | Spread | Lions | Opp | Att-Comp | Yards | TDs | INTs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9/13/09 | Saints | 13.5 | 27 | 45 | 16-37 | 205 | 0 | 3 |
| 9/20/09 | Vikings | 10 | 13 | 27 | 18-30 | 152 | 1 | 2 |
| 10/4/09 | Bears | 10 | 24 | 48 | 24-36 | 296 | 1 | 1 |
| 11/8/09 | Seahawks | 10 | 20 | 32 | 22-42 | 203 | 2 | 5 |
| 11/15/09 | Vikings | 17 | 10 | 27 | 29-51 | 224 | 1 | 0 |
| 11/26/09 | Packers | 11 | 12 | 34 | 20-43 | 213 | 1 | 4 |
| 12/6/09 | Bengals | 13 | 13 | 23 | 11-26 | 143 | 1 | 2 |
| 12/4/11 | Saints | 9 | 17 | 31 | 31-44 | 408 | 1 | 1 |
| 1/7/12 | Saints | 11 | 28 | 45 | 28-43 | 380 | 3 | 2 |
| 9/16/12 | 49ers | 7 | 19 | 27 | 19-32 | 230 | 1 | 1 |
| 10/6/13 | Packers | 9 | 9 | 22 | 25-40 | 262 | 1 | 0 |
| 11/23/14 | Patriots | 7 | 9 | 34 | 18-46 | 264 | 0 | 1 |
| 12/28/14 | Packers | 7.5 | 20 | 30 | 20-41 | 217 | 3 | 0 |
Italics = playoff game
In 2012, Stafford threw a touchdown pass to Brandon Pettigrew with 1:29 left in San Francisco to pull Detroit within 27-19. However, the 49ers recovered the onside kick and ran out the clock. That's the closest he has come to pulling off a big upset — he would have needed two touchdowns, an onside kick and a two-point conversion in the last 90 seconds just to force overtime.
Stafford wasn’t great against the 49ers, only passing for 230 yards, with 50 of those coming on a catch-and-run by Joique Bell. Johnson did have eight catches for 94 yards, but Stafford never came close to the form that had seen him tie an NFL record by throwing for at least 350 yards in the four previous games.
Normally, things go more like they did last year against the Patriots. New England was a 7-point favorite, but dominated both sides of the ball in an easy 34-9 victory. Stafford was terrible — 18 of 46 for 264 yards and an interception — and the Lions couldn't run the ball, with Bell totaling 48 yards on 19 carries. On the other side, Tom Brady threw for 349 yards and two scores.
Stafford has never come up with a heroic performance to lead his team to an upset win, but for most of his career, he's been stuck with a defense that couldn't get the stops the Lions needed. Even last season, when Ndamukong Suh anchored the best Detroit defense in more than a decade, they couldn't slow down elite quarterbacks. Brady and the Patriots scored 34 points, while Aaron Rodgers put up 30 in Green Bay in a 10-point win.
Stafford is also prone to mistakes, and while a mediocre team might miss the chance at a turnover, a very good team is going to pull down an interception or strip the ball out on a sack. That's what happened last Sunday night against Denver — the Broncos jumped two routes for key interceptions and knocked the ball loose on a sack for a fumble. Denver didn't come into the game as huge favorites, but it was a Sunday night showcase for the Lions and they didn't get the job done.
There’s no question that Stafford can put up huge numbers against average teams and bad ones, especially when Johnson finds a matchup he can exploit. So far, though, he hasn’t been able to duplicate those performances in the toughest games of his career — don’t forget that he’s also 0-2 in the postseason — and that’s something he needs to fix before he can ever be considered a star.
