Matthew Stafford had big dreams in Detroit, dreams he harbored until the day he decided to leave.
In a recent interview with the Free Press, Stafford said his dream was to be here "the next 10 years and we win two Super Bowls."
But with the Lions starting another rebuild under another new regime, Stafford, who turned 33 this month, realized it was time to move on. He said he and his wife Kelly "started talking about it before last season" with the knowledge that 2020 was a make-or-break year.
"We were hoping that, golly, let's go, I hope this thing takes off and we play great. But if it doesn't, you just knew what was going to happen," Stafford said. "They were going to tear it down and rebuild.
"And anytime you switch GMs and a head coach, you know that they're going to want to bring their own people in, and that's going to take time. And I, frankly, didn't feel like I was the appropriate person to oversee that time."
Dan Campbell would have been Stafford's fourth full-time head coach in Detroit. Brad Holmes would have been his third full-time GM. And Stafford, after 12 years in the NFL, could picture the outcome if he stayed. No one would have liked it.
"In my mind, I felt like I was going to be able to help us go win six, seven, eight games, because I wasn't gonna let us lose more than that, you know? But I probably wasn't good enough (by myself) to help us win more than that," he said. "And maybe we don't ever get those top picks that we needed."
The Lions would have been stuck in purgatory, and the end of Stafford's prime would have gone to waste. So Stafford sat down with team president Rod Wood and owner Sheila Ford Hamp a few weeks ago and the two sides agreed it was time to part ways.
Stafford called it "a tough conversation, probably the hardest one I've ever had."
Now he's headed to Los Angeles, the new franchise quarterback of the Rams, to chase the dreams that eluded him in Detroit.
"I've always wanted to play in those big games, I feel like I will excel in those situations," he said. "I wanted to shoot my shot."
