Matthew Stafford comments on playing for Rams in 2024
The Los Angeles Rams' 2023 season is over and now, the offseason begins. The team has a few questions to answer over the coming months and a big one is whether or not soon-to-be 36-year-old quarterback, Matthew Stafford, comes back to play in 2024. As it stands, he's under contract through the 2026 season.The Pro Bowl […]
The Los Angeles Rams' 2023 season is over and now, the offseason begins.
The team has a few questions to answer over the coming months and a big one is whether or not soon-to-be 36-year-old quarterback, Matthew Stafford, comes back to play in 2024. As it stands, he's under contract through the 2026 season.
The Pro Bowl signal-caller and Super Bowl champ made his intentions clear to reporters after Sunday's loss to the Detroit Lions.
“That’s my plan right now. Yeah, my plan is to be back and you’re going to have to deal with me for another year, so have fun with that," Stafford told reporters, smiling as he left the podium.
Rams are in good shape heading into 2024
Right now, the Rams have a little more than $44 million in overall cap space and 36 players on the roster. They have $28,420,034 in effective cap space, per Over The Cap, which is the difference after projecting the cost of the 2024 draft class. So, the projection is the Rams will have around $28.4 million in cap room with 46 players on the roster (they have 10 draft picks, currently).
That number could change via draft day trades and whatnot, but that's a good position to be in. They don't have a bunch of huge names heading toward free agency, either. It'd be smart to re-sign Akhello Witherspoon and Kevin Dotson. Maybe even Alaric Jackson, but those are the biggest priorities of the 17 impending free agents.
"We got a lot of young guys and not only rookies, but guys who hadn’t played a lot of football, but stepped into big time roles and became huge pieces of our team and stars in our league," said Stafford. [I'm] so proud of those guys and happy to be a part of a team that has a group of guys like that. It takes everybody, right? It takes coaches, it takes trainers, strength staff, everything, to get to these points in the season and came up a little bit short today, but really proud of those guys.”
2023 was supposed to be a season in which the Rams ended up with a top-5 draft pick, but they arrived a year early. As the team continues to distance itself from the 2021 Super Bowl run in which they forewent the draft and signed/traded for a lot of top talent, they continue to accrue assets that allow them to build a competitive roster.
2024 falls in line with that and Sean McVay and co. play their cards right – next year could be an even bigger success than 2023.
