It’s over! The Detroit Lions–LA Rams week 1 game is wrapped up after the overtime win. The game had its ups and downs, but the overtime rule changed everything. Matthew Stafford somehow recovered from a 14+ point difference and repeated history while doing so.

Blake Warye, an NFL researcher, pointed out something interesting about the game. He took to X and posted, “This would be the Rams first comeback from down 14+ points since they beat Washington in 2012 with McVay as their TEs coach.” But there’s a Lions side to this story as well.

Warye’s post further continued, “On the other side, this would be the Lions first OT win since 2016 where Matthew Stafford led them to the win.” Seems like Dan Campbell is doing a great job at coaching his Lions because last year, the Lions ended their 3-decade-old playoff draught!

As evident, McVay, Chargers and Matthew Stafford have a history. It was 2012, week 2 of the regular season when the Rams went against the Redskins. Those were the days of RGIII and Sam Bradford and back then, McVay was Washington Redskins’ TE coach.

In that game, the St. Louis Rams trained 21-6 in the second quarter but things changed after Sam Bradford’s 1-yard pass to Danny Amendola and brought the previous 21-6 game to 21-12. But Bradford didn’t stop there. After that play, things started to look up and the Rams clinched a 31-28 win. Just like Sean McVay lost the comeback opportunity back in 2012, he struggled to with the same thing against Jared Goff’s Lions.

Jared Goff puts a stop to Sean McVay’s Rams

Last time Matthew Stafford visited the Ford Field was back in the 2023 season NFC Wild Card game when the Lions beat the Rams 24-23. Same thing happened again except this time; the margin was a bit bigger. From 2016 to 2020, the time when Stafford was with the Lions, he only led the team to one overtime victory. Hence, this is the Lions’ first overtime victory since 2016.

It was the game against the Vikings where Stafford threw for 219 yards and scored two touchdowns in the process. The game was tied to 16 by the end of the 4 quarter and the game went to OT. Stafford’s 11 plays raked in 87 yards, and he threw a 28 yards TD pass to Golden Tate with 87 yards remaining on the clock and took a comfortable 6 point lead, winning the game by 22-16.

Today, Jared Goff broke the same record, but with a different flair. Goff threw for 217 yards and scored one touchdown. However, he was also intercepted once just like Stafford who did way better on paper. This battle of the number one overall picks is just going to get better with time.