Detroit Lions: What if Matthew Stafford suddenly retired like Andrew Luck?

The Detroit Lions success relies heavily on how well Matthew Stafford plays, but what if he suddenly retired like Andrew Luck did last weekend?

The Detroit Lions success is very heavily tied to how Matthew Stafford plays. This isn’t groundbreaking news because the same can be said of almost every team in the NFL.

Despite all the talk in the media or even among some fans that Darrell Bevell was hired to de-emphasize Matthew, that’s simply not the case and in most close ballgames the outcome will still come down to Matthew’s right arm.

The importance of having a quarterback that a team can rely upon was magnified this past weekend when Indianapolis Colts quarterback Andrew Luck decided to abruptly retire. The way it unfolded that the news actually broke during the Colts preseason game was unfortunate since it did not allow Luck the opportunity to step down on his own terms and created negative fan backlash, but regardless of how it occurred, it has plain and simple left the Colts without Andrew Luck.

For a team expected to be in the thick of the AFC playoffs and as a franchise feeling like they had a chance at making a run at the Super Bowl, this was devastating news.

Now in their particular situation, Jacoby Brissett, who will now become the Colts starting signal-caller happens to be a pretty talented athlete with a fairly talented team around him which means they still have an opportunity to be pretty competitive. But it’s not that same as having Luck under center.

Here in Detroit, quarterback Matthew Stafford is the most polarizing athlete in the city. He has more arm talent than the vast majority of quarterbacks in the NFL, yet how the Lions have fared against playoff teams under his guiding hand has been less than stellar.

They say quarterbacks get too much credit in victory and too much blame in defeat. In Stafford’s case, he has gotten far too much blame for merely being the quarterback on mostly average to poor Lions teams. That doesn’t mean he hasn’t deserved some of the blame, but not nearly as much as he has received.

Which leads us to an intriguing question; what if Matthew Stafford suddenly retired?