What Scheme Should Stafford Be In?

What kind of scheme does Stafford need?  I have had a few people ask this question of me lately and it is always followed up with, "he has been in a few and has not had any success in any of them."  Which in truth, is not true.  If your only standard for success is playoff wins, then you are right. He hasn't had any success in any scheme, but not because of his play.

Warning
I feel I need to warn you first however, I go into a lot of detail and this is a longer article. Hope its not too boring though.

As most of us know, Stafford's first couple years were shortened by two dislocated shoulders before he had surgery to correct the problem. In his first season as a healthy starter, Stafford threw for 5,038 yards, 41 Touchdowns, 16 picks and a 97.2 QB Rating.

This year there maybe be as many as 4 QBs who reach 5,000 yards for their first time, but let's face it, as the NFL continues to change rules to aid the passing game, it will happen more and more. Before this year however, only a total of 5 QBs have ever reached that mark. Only one has done it multiple times (Brees 5 times). Considering Stafford did it 7 years ago, this is still a huge feat.

Before this year, a total of only 7 QBs have ever thrown for 40+ TDs in a season. So you can see that in 2011, Stafford had the kind of season that put him in elite company. Those numbers for a QB are considered successful by any standards that are even reasonable. To say that is not a successful season for a quarterback, is being simply ridiculous. When you consider that in 2011, Stafford had also injured his throwing hand ans played through it wearing a glove, and in the four games and a bye week while he was healing, he threw ten of those picks? That is only 6 interceptions in the other 12 games. That season is even more impressive. It is one of the greatest single seasons by a QB in history. Average QBs simply dont do that under any circumstances. Yet even if you really wanted to say this was an anomaly, it might interest you that in 2012, Stafford came only 33 yards shy of breaking the 5,000 yard plateau a second time?

I know, you are still wanting to see the wins.

In 2011, the Lions won 10 games. The most wins the Lions had in the previous ten seasons was seven! But in Stafford's first healthy season after coming to a team that went 0-16 the year before he was drafted and was nearly void of talent, he has a historic season and the Lions win 10 games and go to the playoffs. In that game, Stafford threw two picks, but he also threw for 380 yards and 3 TDs.

The picks might bother you though, but consider what position he was put in. The only reason they were playing that game was because they lost to the Packers in the last game of the season, giving GB the bye week instead of the Lions having it. Against the Packers, Stafford threw for 520 yards, 5 TDs and another 2 picks. 

Oh my God those picks again right? Try to understand something. When your team cant run the ball and defenses are playing pure pass coverage, and you are forced to air the ball out deep almost every play to one good receiver and you are are still playing behind because your defense cant stop a pass? The miscues will happen.

In week 17 and the playoff game, Stafford threw for a total of 900 yards and 8 TDs. In 2 freaking games! He attempted 102 passes in those two games and completed 64 of them.  Mean while, the Lions as a team ran for a total of 105 yards and the defense allowed 946 yards, 9 TDs, and only picked off 1 pass.

In case you haven't figured it out yet, the Lions did not lose those games because Stafford was not successful in those games. They lost because the run game didn't even come close to helping him in the least bit and the defense may have been even worse. Just imagine, without Stafford, the Lions would not have even come close to the playoffs that season. With even a decent defense they would have had a bye week and possibly won a playoff game and more.

However the scheme was not perfect back then either. Linehan had two major flaws. 1) He had no run game or short passing game. (Calvin Johnson had over 200 yards in both of those games) 2) He made zero adjustments.

The Lions had several come from behind wins in 2011 and in one interview Schwartz was asked what kind of adjustments he was making at half times that they were moving the ball in the second half so much better. His answer was "We don't really make adjustments. We just let great players make great plays".

In 2012, defenses started dropping two safeties deep along with doubling up coverage on Calvin Johnson. Their only mission was to take the big play away. Even with that, Stafford threw for almost 5,000 yards again, but they were not able to come back and win like they were the year before. Schwartz ended up being true to his word and the coaches never made any adjustments, and they only won 4 games. In 2013 they continued with the same thing and still didn't adjust the scheme to handle short passes or a run game and won only 7 games and the coaches were fired after that. Even so, in that scheme, Stafford threw for 14,655 yards in three seasons.

Then Came Caldwell and he hire Joe Lombardi to be the OC. Lombardi had everyone on the offense confused, especially the offensive linemen. Quite often they were missing their assignments completely and letting defenders come through untouched. Stafford went from 23 sacks in 2013, to 45 in 2014 and 44 in 2015. Meanwhile Lombardi kept calling down field pass plays that took time to develop while the OL was never giving the receivers enough time to run their routes.

In 2014 the Lions had finally put together a good defense and ended with a top 3 defense in the NFL. Lombardi's aggressive scheme with no protection only moved the ball when teams were in prevent defense. Stafford directed an NFL record 8 come from behind 4th quarter wins that year and they won 11 games and made the playoffs.


The Myth of the Bad Call .... Non Call
Fans like to blame the loss on the refs for the blatantly bad pass interference call that they decided to strangely pick up the flag "after" they marked off the yardage and moved the chains. The truth was the Lions weren't going to win that game anyway. Not because of Stafford or the offense, but because the top ranked defense. What a lot of fans don't remember is that the Lions defense was literally shutting the Cowboys offense down for half a game and well into the third quarter. Then the worst case scenario happened. The Lions top CB that year, Rashean Mathis left the game injured. With only one good cornerback on the defense in Slay, the Cowboys started moving the ball at will and ended up winning the game partially due to a controversial (Ridiculously bad) penalty/pick up the flag choke by the refs. But as bad as that call was, the Lions could not stop the Cowboys from moving the ball with one CB and they likely were not going to win anyway.

No Replacements
In the off season, Suh left and Mathis never came back from injury the same and soon retired. The Lions lost IMO the two most important keys to a great 4-3 defense. They lost their pass rushing DT and one of their good CBs. Without replacing them with similar types of players, they were essentially playing prevent defense all year. If you don't have a DT who takes away the pocket, the QB will simply step up into a clean pocket to escape the DE's. With only one good CB, it doesn't take long for a WR to come open.

After a year and a half of pure confusion in the offense, Lombardi was fired and in came Jim Bob Cooter. At first he looked like a genius. Again, many fans believe he dumbed down the playbook, but the truth is he just cut out some of the long developing plays and started calling short passes to get rid of the ball quicker. This protected Stafford a little more and helped him have more open receivers. In the off-season Cooter trashed Lombardi's playbook and designed his own, according to his words. His scheme has left the downfield passes nearly completely for short dink and dunk passes.  He has taken the gunslinger ways from Stafford and turned him into a pure game manager. That just doesn't fit Stafford's football personality.

The Myth of Jim Bob Cooter
Another misconception many fans and even most of the media had after the first season with Cooter was that he had developed Stafford into a much more efficient QB.  This belief comes from doing nothing but looking at the stats and seeing the drop in picks and rise in completion percentage. If you don't really pay attention to what all is happening, that is the conclusion one would have when looking at those stats. The guys from 97.1 the Ticket radio station were a big part of pushing that belief. They didn't look at the whole picture, saw the stats and came to a wrong conclusion, and then they pushed it to the listeners and the average fan being the sheep they are, started believing it.  Then Patricia came in and didn't watch all of the Lions games to come to his own conclusion and likely heard the media hype and possibly the Fords repeating it as well and decided to keep the OC who was credited with developing Stafford into a more efficient QB. Unfortunately they were all wrong.

Cooter never did a single thing that actually developed Stafford.  All he did was call short pass plays instead of the continuous down field passes that Linehan and Lombardi called. When a QB is always airing it out, he will complete fewer and throw more picks. When you start having him dink and dunk with safe passes, his pick rate will drop and his completion percentage will rise naturally. Its basic football 101 logic. But along with helping those statistics of Stafford's, it had bad effects on other things. When a team only dins and dunks and never throws down field until they are two scores down, it draws the safeties in closer as they anticipate short passes. It gives the short route receivers less room to run and makes it harder for them to get desparation. Something the Lions are struggling with badly now. It takes the run game away some. Something the Lions are having their best year with but due to having beast top picks in the draft and great RBs to do.

The Cure
Stafford is a gun slinger. Not a game manager. He needs to be a part of an aggressive offense that moves the ball down field. He needs a coordinator who will be aggressive but just not stupidly like Linehan did where he had no short game at all. A good OC will mix the plays up. He will dink and dunk, throw in a handful of medium range passes as well as go deep here and there. If you don't mix it up, you become very predictable and basic and that is easy to defend.  Linehan was the closest to what Stafford needs but he was still too predictable with down field passing only. Lombardi was just a mess. Cooter is far too conservative and has taken Stafford out of his element completely. If the Lions would add an OC who is aggressive but knows how to mix it all up as well as use a little imagination, and they continue to have this run game, and they add a good CB and D-linemen? They can have a very good team. Then you will finally see Stafford in his element and having success as a QB again, while the better run game and defense would give the TEAM more success in the win column.

Stafford Does More With Less than Any Elite Quarterback

Stafford has done more with less than any elite quarterback since 1995.

I pulled some stats on defensive rankings and run game rankings for every team since 1995. That is 23 years of football. For each team, I took where they ranked in the NFL for each year in the following categories.

DEFENSE
Defense Points Allowed per game
Defense Yards Allowed per Play
OFFENSE
Rushing Attempts per game
Rushing yards per play
Rushing Yards per game
Rushing Touchdowns scored

Then I took these 6 rankings and got the average for them for a Total Support for the QB ranking.

These are statistics available to me that support a QB and can make it easier or harder for him to succeed. These same exact stats are used for every team every year for all QBs. There is no bias in this. (I will add OL Stats when I find good ones)

The Worst Support for any QB since 1995 (300 attempts or more) was...  2014 Derek Carr - Oak with a support ranking of 29.0 and his QB Rating that year was 76.6

To give a clearer picture, this is where his team ranked in the NFL for each of those stats....
32nd - Defense Points Allowed per game
20th - Defense Yards Allowed per Play
32nd - Rushing Attempts per game
26th - Rushing yards per play
32nd - Rushing Yards per game
32nd - Rushing Touchdowns scored

32+20+32+26+32+32 = 174 / 6 = 29.0

In case you arent following, the higher the number, the worse support a QB received from his run game and defense.

Just for kicks and giggles, Joey Harrington ranked 3rd in 2003 with a support ranking of 28.7. His QB Rating was 63.9

A total of 46 QBs have had a support ranking of 25.0 or higher. These are the  7 QBs who kept a QBR of 90+ with a support of 25+
2017 Matt Stafford Det - Support 26.7 - QBR 99.3
2015 Matt Stafford DET - Support 25.5 - QBR 97.0
2008 Kurt Warner ARI ..- Support 26.2 - QBR 96.9
2012 Drew Brees NO ....- Support 25.0 - QBR 96.3
2016 Matt Stafford DET - Support 25.5 - QBR 96.3
2015 Philip Rivers SD .- Support 27.7 - QBR 93.8
2012 Tony Romo DAL ....- Support 28.0 - QBR 90.5

To give you some more perspective, this is what some elite QB have had to deal with in their careers....

Drew Brees
10.9 or under = 4 times
11-15.9 = 4 Times
16-24.9 = 7 Times
25+ = 1 Time

Tom Brady
10.9 or under = 6 times
11-15.9 = 5 Times
16-24.9 = 5 Times
25+ = 0 Times

Aaron Rodgers
10.9 or under = 1 time
11-15.9 = 3 Times
16-24.9 = 4 Times
25+ = 0 Times

Matt Ryan
10.9 or under = 1 time
11-15.9 = 4 Times
16-24.9 = 4 Times
25+ = 0 Times

Philip Rivers
10.9 or under = 3 times
11-15.9 = 0 Times
16-24.9 = 8 Times
25+ = 1 Time

Peyton Manning
10.9 or under = 2 times
11-15.9 = 7 Times
16-24.9 = 7 Times
25+ = 1 Times

Ben Roethlisberger
10.9 or under = 4 times
11-15.9 = 4 Times
16-24.9 = 4 Times
25+ = 0 Times

Matthew Stafford
10.9 or under = 0 times
11-15.9 = 0 Times
16-24.9 = 4 Times
25+ = 4 Times