Laura Rutledge weighs in on the Matthew Stafford Hall of Fame debate

Laura Rutledge has stepped into one of the hottest debates in the NFL following Sunday’s Super Bowl — whether Matthew Stafford should be deserving of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

The ESPN host was a guest on “McElroy and Cubelic In the morning” on WJOX out of Birmingham, Alabama., and shared her thoughts on Stafford following the Los Angeles Rams winning the Super Bowl.

Rutledge said Stafford couldn’t control where he was drafted and while he didn’t play in meaningful games in Detroit, he still put up numbers.

“To look at what he did this year,” she said, “to make the gamble, or however you want to put it, to go to L.A., to better himself, to be surrounded by really good players and you can still do all that stuff and it doesn’t work out. So I do think there’s something to be said for executing in the biggest moments and getting there, even with some lulls during the season. There were some times when we said, ‘Man, this team is not going to be a threat at all to win the Super Bowl, they may not even be a postseason threat.’ There were all kinds of reasons why. So I think when you look at that part of it, it is a one season situation and it is worthy of a lot of praise.

The bottom line, according to Rutledge, is to look at Stafford’s entire career, and not get caught in a recency bias.

“Hall of Fame? I don’t know yet,” she said. “We’ll see what he does in the next few years.”

.@ESPN‘s @LauraRutledge joined the Thursday edition of @MacandCube to give her input on the Matthew Stafford/Hall of Fame conversation following the @RamsNFL‘s Super Bowl win. pic.twitter.com/RGdG3WlUxP

— WJOX 94.5 FM (@WJOX945) February 17, 2022

Keith Farner

A former newspaper veteran, Keith Farner is a news manager for Saturday Down South.