Matthew Stafford’s 2017 season was among best ever for QBs without a running game

I sure do write a lot about Matthew Stafford, don’t I? In the last few weeks we’ve looked at all of Stafford’s comebacks and we checked all the splits stats to decipher where the bulk Matthew Stafford’s production comes from. Today we continue what I’m now calling the Summer Stafford Series with another statistical breakdown of No. 9’s play.

As we know, the Lions run game has been historically bad since Barry Sanders retired, more so now than ever. The Lions ranked 32nd in rushing in 2017 and 2015. Through that, Matthew Stafford has still managed to play quite well. In 2017, he had tied his career low in interceptions, had the highest passer rating of his career, and had the second highest completion percentage of his career.

This got me wondering, is Stafford an anomaly? Is Stafford a guy that, despite such a poor run game, can be an unbelievable quarterback? There’s only one way to find out. So I charted the last 20 years of quarterbacks playing with the 32nd ranked rushing attack to see where Stafford falls. let’s look.

You can see right off the bat that there are a lot of recognizable names on this list—a few Hall Of Famers, in fact. Peyton Manning immediately sticks out here. I’ve compared these two on countless different occasion because they consistently have gone through the same woes on the field in their careers.

After having the worst rushing attack in the league in 2009, Manning’s run game only improved a little bit the following year, but the Colts went to the Super Bowl. Oddly enough, Jim Caldwell was the Colts coach at that time. The year after he left Indy, the team’s run game got a little better. Going from 26th to 21st. It kept going up from there.

Peyton’s little brother also dealt with the 32nd ranked rushing attack in 2011. That Giants team went on to win the Super Bowl that year. Of course, that team is a freak of nature and cannot be explained in any other way than they just got hot at the right time.

What’s encouraging is that Stafford stands out here. He threw the fourth most touchdowns (20) of any quarterback in 2017, the third highest total of his career. He had the sixth highest completion percentage in the NFL (65.7), his personal second-best mark.

Among the other running game-less quarterbacks on the chart above, he threw the second fewest interceptions and had the second highest passer rating. Compared to his counterparts, Matthew belongs in just about every conversation that involves the word elite. This is a another example of that.

Of course I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that the Lions appear on this list three other times as well. Once from Stafford’s solid 2015 season, and two from other, less successful Lions passers. You can see all the glory that is Jon Kitna and Joey Harrington. It’s yet another hard reminder of how bad things could be if some Lions fans got their wish and Stafford left.

There’s another side of all of this, though. I have 20 years of really bad running games charted here. We know Stafford has performed really well with a bad run game, but how bad is his run game compared to others?

The Lions are bad, but, as you can see, it can get much worse. The 2000 Chargers were an unbelievable garbage fire. I know I have multiple quarterbacks listed for them above, but it was Ryan Leaf who started the majority of the games for the Bolts that year. Again, imagine how bad things could be.

The Lions’ 2017 run game is not the worse. They’re the eighth lowest in rushing yards, fourth lowest in yards per carry, eighth lowest in yards per game and tied for eighth lowest in touchdowns.

An interesting thing about last year’s team is that of the top ten teams that ran for the fewest yards on the list above, only two of them finished the season with winning records: the 2017 Lions and the 2008 Arizona Cardinals. The latter made it to the Super Bowl but ultimately lost to the Steelers.

So essentially what we learned today is that Matthew Stafford is really good, but most us already knew that. The other thing of notes is that this Lions team may not be far off from big things. Several of these successful quarterbacks on the list were able to do big things despite a limited or downright poor rushing attack.

As for Stafford and the Lions, we’ve already seen this.

Lions fans could be in for an extremely fun season if the Lions can finally get that run game going.