Justin Rogers

The Detroit News

Allen Park — Comebacks are kind of Matthew Stafford’s thing.

The Detroit Lions quarterback led a single-season record eight last season and is 13th on the all-time list with 26 for his career. He nearly had another one last week, driving the Lions 88 yards in the final minutes against the Atlanta Falcons before the potential game-winning touchdown was overturned by replay review.

On the internet, especially news aggregation site Reddit, Stafford’s reputation for snatching victory from the jaws of defeat has taken on a life of its own, spurring the creation of several internet memes. If you don’t know what those are, the easiest way to explain it is a humorous phrase or image that spreads virally.

There are a number of Stafford memes, but the most popular is a four-panel comic, each with the same shot of Stafford’s face, but zoomed in each panel. The panels read:

“That’s a nice lead you have there.”

“It’d be a shame”

“If someone”

“Made a comeback.”

Stafford isn’t a big social-media guy, but given the proliferation of the image, it shouldn’t surprise you that he’s seen them.

“I have seen a couple pictures of those from people that have sent them to me. Pretty funny, I guess,” Stafford said.

The Lions travel to Minnesota this week, home of one of Stafford’s more improbable comebacks.

Down three with 23 seconds remaining and no timeouts in Week 9 last season, he completed a short throw to Golden Tate before finding Andre Roberts deep down the middle of the field for a 27-yard gain. After racing to the line and spiking the ball to stop the clock with two seconds left, Matt Prater kicked a 58-yard field goal to send the game into overtime.

The Lions got the ball first in the extra session and drove 87 yards for the game-winning touchdown.

“It’s up there,” Stafford said when asked where that comeback ranked in improbability. “It’s a tough situation to be in, one we hopefully don’t have to put ourselves in too often, but we practice those things and it came up in a game. We had some guys make some great plays to get us there.”

jdrogers@detroitnews.com

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