Wrapping up a trip back to the highlights of Matthew Stafford’s career with the Detroit Lions to date. This segment covers 2017 to his early finish to 2019.

If you’ve followed the Detroit Lions for a certain amount of time, the premature end to Matthew Stafford’s 2019 season was merely confirmation of something that we already knew. Stafford is the heart and soul of the Lions, massively underappreciated on the national scene and by many of the team’s own fans, and of extreme value to the franchise.

With such a shaky backup quarterback situation, the reality is that maybe even the most vocal supporters of #9 still underestimated how vital he is to the team’s success. They’re not going to win a single game this year with him out of the lineup.

After nearly a decade of taking for granted that Stafford would be behind center, and nearly a decade of projecting the failures of the franchise onto him, 2019 is a validation of sorts. Before getting hurt, Stafford was playing at an MVP level, and the team was still struggling (3-4-1) to stay competitive.

Remove him from the equation, and the season went from disappointing but at least competitive and devolved into the type of horror show that we haven’t seen in Detroit since right before his arrival.

Here is the final piece of my four part retrospective on Stafford’s Lions career, covering the start of the 2017 season up until reaching the 40,000 yard milestone earlier this year. You can read the previous segments of this ongoing series by clicking any of the links below …

While I fear that his latest back injury could have Stafford considering an early retirement in the vein of the last two Lions superstars, hopefully this list is merely a precursor to greater accomplishments on the back end of his career.

The top Stafford moments from No. 31 to 40 are…