The official contract took another month, but it’s a well-deserved payday for Stafford, who has played the best football of his 17-year career over the past five seasons with the Rams.
After 12 seasons struggling to turn the Detroit Lions into a consistent playoff contender, Stafford won Super Bowl LVI in his inaugural season with Los Angeles. He has made two of his three Pro Bowls as a Ram and has already experienced one more postseason than the three he saw in Motown. His age-37 season was his best yet. Stafford led the league with 4,707 passing yards, 46 touchdown passes and a career-high 7.7 completion percentage en route to taking home his first MVP.
He fell just shy of another Super Bowl to cap off his best pro campaign, falling to the Seattle Seahawks in the NFC Championship Game despite a 374-yard, three-touchdown performance against the league’s top-scoring defense.
LA came so close and Stafford still obviously having more peak performance to give in just a few years than two decades in the NFL made it an easy decision to run it again. The Rams are determined to be ready for life after Stafford, having delivered one of the magical first rounds of the 2026 draft by selecting QB Ty Simpson 13th overall, but they’re clearly still in work-now mode with their slick vet under center.
They have a gritty, young defense on the rise and an offense loaded with talent — especially Kyren Williams, Puka Nacua and Davante Adams — around Stafford. They’re even going back to their old ways of mulling over first-round picks for proven talent, sending the 2026 No. 29 overall pick to the Kansas City Chiefs for cornerback Trent McDuffie in March in a package that included two 2026 Day 3 picks and a ’27 third rounder. Most importantly, after years of question marks surrounding the fates of Stafford and head coach Sean McVay, both appear as bought in as ever for a future that includes winning another Lombardi Trophy.
The Rams have had incredible success relying on annual check-ins with Stafford in the later stages of his career, and after another extension, he’ll once again go as far as their MVP quarterback can take them.