Los Angeles Rams star quarterback Matthew Stafford knows how football can take a toll on the body.
Stafford, who will turn 39 in February, also knows how age can take a toll on the body. He used this knowledge to defend his 35-year-old teammate Aaron Donald’s botched scoop-and-score attempt in the Rams’ 24-9 win over the Los Angeles Chargers on Sunday.
The NFL’s X account posted a video of a mic’d up Stafford speaking about Donald’s botched fumble recovery right after it happened on Monday.
“You know how hard it is the bend at the knees, no doubt,” Stafford said while watching the replay of Donald’s failed fumble recovery.
“If anybody knew how hard it is, at our age, to go down there and get a ball,” he added.
Stafford then turned to a Rams assistant coach and said, “Coach, I need an official timeout to go down and get some of those. If they only knew! That’s just so hard.”
Donald has never scored a touchdown in his legendary NFL career, and probably won’t get a better opportunity to do so.
Stafford has thrown 463 touchdown passes in his NFL career and rushed for 18 more. So while he can sympathize with Donald’s age impacting his inability to corral that ball, he won’t understand the regret Donald surely felt about failing to scoop it up.
