Matthew Stafford Entering Career Crossroads with Detroit Lions in 2015

Last season, Matthew Stafford was given a wise, fatherly, offensive-minded head coach with Super Bowls under his belt and a stamp of approval from Peyton Manning. Stafford was given a bright young offensive coordinator plucked from one of the most aggressive passing offenses in the game. He was given a high-profile free-agent wideout and a high-flying rookie tight end.

He didn't do much with them.

Yes, the Lions won 11 games. Yes, Stafford finally snuck into the Pro Bowl. But the 2009 No. 1 overall pick didn't just fall far short of his once obvious potential. He was arguably worse than Jay Cutler—whose disastrous season got just about everyone at Halas Hall fired.

If the Lions hadn't had the NFL's No. 3 scoring defense in 2014, they wouldn't have come anywhere near the playoffs. Without All-Pro Ndamukong Suh anchoring that unit, the pressure's on Stafford to produce. With reinforcements at running back and offensive line, and a full offseason in Joe Lombardi's offense, Stafford's officially out of excuses.

With most of his contract's dead money coming off the books next season, the Lions will have to decide after this season whether Stafford is still the quarterback of their future.

Heading into training camp, Stafford's coming off a 2014 performance that feels tough to quantify. There were fewer indelible moments, positive or negative, and the Lions offense frequently ground out just enough to win—save for a couple of games blown by abominable kicking.

In fact, it's easy to quantify. That's what statistics are for! Here's how Stafford ranked across the major rate stats and analytics:

Cmp%	Y/A	Y/C	ANY/A	TD%	Int%	Sk%	DYAR	PFF	QBR
25th	18th	13th	19th	25th	7th	22nd	15th	22nd	24th

The popular narrative of Stafford's 2014 campaign was more cautious play leading to more wins. But while Stafford's interception rate was the lowest of his career, he hardly played mistake-free football.

If anything, Stafford's longstanding issues with accuracy and attention to detail on routine passes were worse than ever. Per Pro Football Focus, Stafford's Accuracy Percentage (completion rate, adjusted for drops, spikes, throwaways and the like) ranked 22nd in the NFL, sandwiched between unimpressive youngsters Geno Smith and Blake Bortles.

It would be easy to blame the transition to a new offense, but if anything, Stafford got less sharp as the season wore on. His 21 incompletions in the division-deciding regular-season finale were a lowlight reel of blown reads, miscommunications and just plain bad throws.

Compared to the rest of his career, Stafford wasn't far from the recent norm when it came to down-to-down effectiveness. His completion rate, average yards per attempt and adjusted net yards per attempt have been steady over the past three seasons.

The real difference came in the high-leverage numbers: Stafford posted his best interception rate, but a very poor touchdown rate—and, by far, his career-worst sack rate.

Ty Schalter/Bleacher Report

Jim Caldwell and Lombardi, brought in to fix the perennially underachieving offense (read: Stafford) got essentially identical results to the previous regime, except they cut down on interceptions by also cutting down on big plays, doubling his sack rate in the process.

Going into 2015, Stafford simply has to execute the down-in, down-out offense at a much higher level—and find a way to get the long ball back, even if it means the occasional turnover. 

As is the case around the NFL each spring, sunny stories about the team are blooming everywhere.

Carlos Osorio/Associated Press

"I think we’re definitely ahead of where we were," wideout Golden Tate told Paula Pasche of the Oakland Press after OTAs, claiming a night-and-day difference in the offense—and Stafford's comfort level with the system. Pasche agreed, noting that Stafford's familiarity with the offense caused minicamp to run noticeably faster this year than last. Caldwell elaborated on Stafford's progress:

"

When he’s more comfortable with the system, which he is, you can see without question that he’s operating at a faster pace. There’s not a whole lot of time when he’s standing in the huddle before he makes the call and he’s got to think it a little bit, which they’d often do because we have an offense that has some verbiage to it. So, it takes a little getting used to. I’ve seen him develop in that area.

"

Tate, like many hopeful Lions fans, thinks the offense is very close and it won't require much more from Stafford to make a huge difference in the W column.

"If we just convert one or two more third downs a game, score seven more points a game or one less penalty we will see improvement," Tate said. "So we’re not trying to totally make over our team. We have what it takes to be a good team and be a good team for a long time. We just want to keep building on what we did last year."

That all would be true if the Lions defense is again the third-best scoring defense in football—a huge demand, as the Lions' top three defensive tackles from 2014 are all under contract elsewhere. If the defense backslides to a middle-of-the-pack unit, the Lions could backslide into sub-.500 form.

Paul Sancya/Associated Press

Stafford can't just avoid being the reason the Lions fail. He's got to—as he was in 2011—be the reason the Lions succeed. The good news: He's got an incredible cast of pass-catchers, a revamped stable of running backs including second-round pick Ameer Abdullah and a further-enhanced offensive line featuring first-round pick Laken Tomlinson.

If he succeeds, Stafford will have two years left on his deal entering 2016, when the cap may jump to $160 million, and Russell Wilson will have set the market for quarterbacks incredibly high. The Lions, free of obligations to pay Suh, could lock Stafford up for life with a massive six- or seven-year deal.

If Stafford doesn't put it all together now, though, he likely never will.

Facing that cold reality would be relatively easy, from the Lions' standpoint: Stafford's dead-money number falls from a horrifying $27 million, per Spotrac.com, to a manageable $11 million in 2016. 2017 is his lame-duck year, so Stafford's contract won't make him untouchable. In fact, as Bleacher Report's Jason Cole reported, Calvin Johnson may be in for an early exit, too.

If Stafford doesn't improve significantly in 2015, he could—like Jay Cutler—trigger a full-scale rebuild that goes all the way to the top.