“Sometimes, I’m Like, ‘Fu*ker, Just Answer Your Phone’”: Matthew Stafford’s Wife on the QB Going AWOL During Camp

The NFL season is a gauntlet. With 17 games now making up the regular-season schedule, plus five weeks of playoffs, the season takes up about six months of the year. You would think that the other six months would be much more relaxing. As Matthew Stafford’s wife, Kelly, has learned, that’s not really the case.

There are a few pockets of freedom for NFL players during the spring and early summer. But once they get to late July, it’s basically like the season has started for them, if it hasn’t for the fans. Training camp runs for a couple of weeks from late July to early August, and during that time, players are absolutely locked in.

So locked in, in fact, that some choose to leave their phones at home or in the car. While that helps with dialing in on film and practice, it can be frustrating for the families of those players. Kelly Stafford, who’s been married to Matthew Stafford for 10 years and has four daughters with him, can’t even get a call back while her husband is at training camp.

“I remember his rookie year, I didn’t understand it. I was like, ‘What do you mean you can’t talk to me the whole day, until you’re done, like where’s your phone?’ And he was like, ‘I leave it in my car, I don’t need it, I’m there to work, this is my job.’ That mentality still exists with him. Once he steps foot on that property for training camp, he’s dialed in,” Kelly said (via her YouTube channel).

And Kelly says, despite this being Matthew Stafford’s 17th training camp in the NFL, he’s still just as focused as he was back in 2009 as a rookie. He was locked in this year from July 24 to August 3 at Loyola Marymount University, where the Los Angeles Rams have held training camp for the past two years.

Kelly did, however, reveal that while Stafford is generally incommunicado during training camp, there are ways to contact him. They share four daughters after all. So there are some people in the building who have their phones that Kelly can contact if there’s an emergency. But other than that, she thinks it’s good that her husband can completely detach for a few hours to focus on his work.

“Other than that, I really can’t reach him. Which, I think is great, and honestly really important to be able to be there and be in. There are some times where I’m like, ‘F*cker, just answer your phone,'” Mrs. Stafford said, laughing. “And even with what has been going on with this last training camp, he was still very dialed in.”

When Kelly says, “What has been going on with this last training camp,” she’s referring to her husband’s problematic back. Stafford has dealt with back issues for years, and it was a major reason the Rams struggled during their Super Bowl defense in 2022.

He received a cortisone injection in August as he is once again dealing with a disc issue. The 37-year-old QB did not participate in training camp at all. Head coach Sean McVay said in mid-August that the issue was “a little bit of both” pain tolerance and lack of function. Not ideal.

The latest updates suggest Stafford has been able to practice in full in recent days. However, The Athletic’s Jourdan Rodrigue has said that she expects this issue to “be a thing” that has to be managed throughout the season. His Week 1 matchup against Houston’s double-digit sack tandem of Will Anderson Jr. and Danielle Hunter isn’t exactly the best starting point for a guy with 70-year-old back problems, either.