For just the second time in his career, Detroit Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford missed a significant portion of a season due to injury. While a shoulder injury in 2010 cut his season to just three games, Stafford lost eight games to a back injury last year in Detroit.
Stafford is progressing from the fracture that ended his 2019 campaign and vows to be ready for the Lions’ offseason program.
Despite Stafford coming off an injury, Lions G.M. Bob Quinn said the team is content with Stafford as their starting quarterback moving into the 2020 season.
“Yeah, I’m totally comfortable and happy that Matthew Stafford is our quarterback,” Quinn said in an interview with Alex Marvez and Gil Brandt on Sirius XM NFL Radio. “He’s going to be in full health once the offseason program starts its course. He’s pretty much at full health right now. I talked to him about 10 days ago. He was in the office. He’s feeling great. He’s in a good mindset. He’s excited.”
Quinn praised Stafford for his work with backup quarterback Jeff Driskel and David Blough as they covered his starts for the remainder of last season. Detroit was unable to win a single game in Stafford’s absence as they plummeted to a 3-12-1 finish for the year.
“Obviously he’s a competitor so for him to miss half a season was hard on him but he did a great job with our backup quarterbacks,” Quinn said. “We went through a couple guys. We had another injury at quarterback a couple weeks after Matthew went down. So just behind the scenes, seeing him in a different light. Since I’ve been there he’s been at every practice and every game. He’s been at every practice and every game but he wasn’t participating the second half of the season but to see him in coach-mode it was pretty cool to see because he really cares about, not only our team, but his teammates and his leadership and him helping those other young quarterbacks really learn our system on the fly when he went down. So I feel great about Matthew, he’s going to come back strong and we’re ready to go for next year.”