Matthew Stafford’s in a spot most quarterbacks barely reach. He’s 37, playing in his 17th NFL season, and coming off a renegotiated deal from earlier this offseason. An elite year still feels like it’s on the table for him. However, the injuries he’s stacked up over the past few seasons make you pause for a second. Will he actually run it back in 2026? Ask Stafford, and he’ll tell you what his NFL future basically comes down to.

“I’m enjoying every moment that I have right now,” the quarterback said on The Rich Eisen Show. “If I end the year healthy, hypothetically, and all those kinds of things, I would surely entertain coming back and playing some more. We’ll see how it goes. But I’m just enjoying where my feet are right now. Having a blast playing ball with this group, and we’ll figure out the future when we get there.”

There were plenty of rumors earlier this offseason about Stafford leaving L.A., maybe even landing somewhere completely unexpected. But the Los Angeles Rams never blinked. They kept their Super Bowl–winning quarterback in-house with a renegotiated deal, and that stability is a big part of why Stafford was fired up for 2025. As he put it himself:

“I’m excited to be back.”

And let’s just say the excitement to return is well paying off. Through 14 weeks, the 37-year-old has played himself straight into the MVP conversation, the one major trophy he still hasn’t touched. The numbers back it up, too. With the Rams sitting atop the NFC West with 10-3, Stafford has stacked up 3,354 passing yards and 35 touchdowns.

In the process, he’s also been busy rewriting parts of the record book. In Week 13 against the Carolina Panthers, he threw his 28th straight touchdown without an interception when he threw a 4-yard strike to Davante Adams, breaking Tom Brady’s mark of 27.

Then he became the first player in NFL history to have at least four passing touchdowns and zero interceptions in three straight games. Then, in Week 14, against the Arizona Cardinals, Stafford (5,441) moved past Big Ben (5,440) for seventh-most completions in league history.

At this point, an elite season feels locked in, the kind of year that could tempt anyone to run it back for one more. But as Stafford has said over and over, it all comes down to staying healthy. And that’s the one thing he’s been battling ever since lifting his first Lombardi four years ago.

Back in 2022, Stafford battled just about everything. We’re talking about multiple concussions, an elbow issue, and eventually a neck injury that sent him to IR. And ever since, injuries have pretty much followed him around, even while he’s kept putting up strong performances. Take 2024, for example. In January 2025, Kelly Stafford revealed that her husband had been playing through a cracked rib situation from Week 15 against the 49ers.

“He cracked four ribs,” Kelly said. “But just didn’t really let anyone in to know really much about it. Continued his everyday process like nothing was wrong, would come home and be miserable.”

Jump to the 2025 offseason, and this time, Stafford missed training camp and the entire preseason due to back soreness, a recurring issue that he has been concerned about.

“He had a little bit of soreness in his back that kind of crept up,” the Rams’ head coach, Sean McVay, said during the training camp. “He’s been throwing, feeling good. It’s not anything that’s necessarily new, something that he’s dealt with before. Going into Year 17, we were going to take a modified approach with him, kind of similar to what we did in the offseason program.”

Meanwhile, the QB is set to make around $44 million in 2025 and about $84 million across the two-year window. If he does come back in 2026, the Rams will take on a projected $48.3 million cap hit.

But whether he’ll actually be back next year is still very much up in the air. After all, Stafford has given different answers each time the retirement question circles back. Take his 2024 appearance on The Pat McAfee Show, for example. He sounded optimistic then, saying there were still a few seasons left in the tank:

“I appreciate this game. It’s given me a ton. I hope I got three or four [seasons] left in me. We’ll see. Every year’s a new year. But I do feel good.”

Fast-forward to the end of the 2024 season, after the divisional-round loss to the Philadelphia Eagles, the tone shifted. The QB was far less definitive when asked about his future:

“As far as my future goes, I mean, it’s 30 minutes after our last game, so I’ll take some time to think about it. I feel like I was playing some really good ball.”

Put all of that together, and two things feel pretty obvious right now. First, Matthew Stafford’s retirement question is going to dominate the conversation in the months ahead. And second, the Rams will almost certainly start preparing for life after Stafford sooner rather than later.

The Rams are projected to trade for Matthew Stafford’s replacement

The Rams looking for Matthew Stafford’s replacement after the 2025 season feels pretty much inevitable at this point, whether he retires or not. The logic’s simple: if he sticks around for one more year, L.A. would love to have him mentor a rookie. And if he walks away, they’ll need a new starter anyway. So the real question becomes: who takes over in 2026?

Right now, reports suggest the Rams could zero in on one of the top quarterback prospects in the 2026 NFL Draft: Indiana’s Fernando Mendoza. And for the time being, it’s starting to look like a real possibility. L.A. owns the Atlanta Falcons’ first-round pick this coming April thanks to last spring’s trade. And with Atlanta sitting at 4–9 so far in 2025, there’s a good chance that the pick lands inside the top 10.

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Meanwhile, the New York Giants currently hold the No. 1 pick. They’re not expected to go quarterback after drafting Jaxson Dart this year. That’s exactly why Trevor Sikkema of Pro Football Focus believes the Rams could try to trade up to No. 1 to land Mendoza. Whether it actually happens is anyone’s guess. But you can already feel a shift coming in the Rams’ quarterback room.