On Thursday night Kelly Stafford will watch her husband, the quarterback, face off against her brother, the coach.
Earlier this week, as another NFL season dawned, a woman in Los Angeles sent a group text message to her husband and her brother. It read, roughly: Hey, what’s the bet we have for this game? Meaning the season’s first kickoff, scheduled for Thursday night at SoFi Stadium. Rams vs. Bills. Defending Super Bowl champion against trendy Super Bowl pick. Matthew Stafford meets Josh Allen and his group of elite wideouts.
As of Tuesday, neither the husband nor the brother had responded. But it wasn’t because they lacked interest in the game or the season ahead. It’s because the person who connected them could do what they could not do, which is acknowledge the awkwardness, the ties that typically bind now dividing a football family.
“She was trying to juice us up,” the brother says, while attempting to come up with a bet that seemed appropriate, searching for the right balance between friendly sting that lands and a joke taken too far. “Maybe like a mini-fantasy-football deal,” he says, hunting for options. Something embarrassing. Something that owed to their allegiances. A tattoo is suggested. “Probably a little much,” he says.
It all is. Most weeks Kelly Stafford would root for Buffalo, because her older brother is Chad Hall, the position coach for those elite Bills receivers. But this is not most weeks. Kelly lives for the Rams all season long, regardless of opponent, no exceptions, no matter what—or who—might threaten to divide her loyalties. They cannot be divided. After all, her husband is the Rams’ quarterback.
Courtesy of Kelly Stafford
Hence a Stafford-Hall subplot for the NFL opener that requires no additional juicing to be juicy. The coach and the quarterback are nearly the same age (Hall is 36; Stafford, 34). They’re from the same state (think peaches). They picked the same sport. They reached the NFL. They’re connected to Sean McVay; the Rams’ coach is also Hall’s high school contemporary—the two played football in the same state, at the same time. And they’re similarly positioned, working for teams that rank among the top five betting favorites to win this season’s championship (most books like the Bills first and the Rams fourth or fifth).
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These men are close, owing to professional and familial bonds. Generally, they speak the night before every game. Chad also likes to send Matthew a song related to the city he’ll play in the next day. It’s tradition. And, as of Tuesday, they planned to continue with the ritual. Hall just needed a tune to match the trash he planned to talk. “I’m sure it will be clever,” Kelly says, because, really, how often does a reigning NFL champion signal-caller square off against his beloved brother-in-law on national TV? (As of Wednesday night, Hall wrote in a text message, he planned to deliver “Take It Easy” by The Eagles. He added an “lol.”)
This isn’t as meaningful as LVI, won by the Rams last February over the Bengals, before the parade, the drunken speech and the most-talked-about elbow in pro sports. Kelly draws a clear delineation there. But still, she admits it’s more meaningful than usual, because of the stakes, the result likely to be raised at Thanksgiving dinners and on family vacations for as long as both shall live.
Evidence of the family nature to this matchup is obvious when Hall calls from Buffalo on Tuesday afternoon. He’s multitasking, he admits, prepping for the opener and helping care for his two young children, with another on the way. They’re yelling and laughing and competing for Dad’s attention. They’re too little to understand their father is competing this week against Uncle Matthew, the guy who lifts them high in the air and showers them with hugs.
Hall first heard of his sister’s new love interest shortly after Kelly met Matthew at the University of Georgia. Kelly was a Bulldogs cheerleader; Matthew was the star quarterback with an arm so strong it mangled his receivers’ fingers. Hall, having grown up in Atlanta, knew about him. He also remained in touch with some of Matthew’s teammates, and the reports he received—she had met her future husband at a bar, she was dancing atop said bar—kicked his older-brother instincts into overdrive. Hall called their parents, who summoned Kelly home to discuss her “decision-making.” Apparently, an important sibling lesson—never tattle—hadn’t yet sunk in. “Big brothers,” Kelly says now. “What can you do?”
Soon after the phone call, Chad visited his sister and her boyfriend in Athens, Ga. The men couldn’t have presented a more contrasting picture. Chad was funny, outgoing, the life of the party. Matthew was shy, at least around strangers, and calm. Chad was searching for his purpose. Matthew had known his pretty much since birth. Chad wasn’t sure he would continue in football, as he wrapped up his career as a running back at Air Force. He was the only college football player in the U.S. to lead his team in both rushing and receiving that year. They hung out at the pool attached to Kelly’s apartment complex, and what struck Chad about Matthew was his size. “He looked like a fullback,” Chad says.
Before long, each started calling the other the “brother I never had.”
Courtesy of Chad Hall (2)
As Kelly and Matthew’s relationship deepened, the families bonded, then intertwined. In the fall of 2008, Matthew was beginning his junior season while keeping an eye on his NFL draft stock. Chad was starting his two years of mandatory military service, working as a second lieutenant who dealt with F-16 fighter jets and their flight paths.
Back then, no one could have anticipated a night like Thursday night.
Service completed, Chad decided to make a run at the NFL. The Lions took Stafford first overall in the 2009 draft; Chad had gone undrafted the previous year. Still, he signed with the Eagles in ’10, making their practice squad and then the active roster as a wideout. He returned punts and caught passes and would play for three franchises—Philly, San Francisco and Kansas City, along with a short stint in Jacksonville that lasted only 10 days in August ’14.
In each of those offseasons, Matthew and Chad trained together under the tyrannical Georgia sun. The two, and Kelly, lived with the Halls. Each held the other accountable. Matthew threw passes. Chad caught them, and the exercise wasn’t pain-free. Hall had hauled in scorchers from Michael Vick and Colin Kaepernick. But the missiles his brother-in-law fired registered as distinct. “It's like his ball oscillates around itself while it gets to you,” Chad says. “It vibrates your hands.”
Chad wasn’t sure what he would do with the rest of his life. He had football, the service experience and one year in the business world—as a maintenance officer in charge of 150 employees—on his résumé. With an assist from Matthew, who encouraged him, Chad decided to try coaching. He liked the variance in locker rooms, how folks from all walks of life tried to coalesce into something more. How he could lead. How it felt like another kind of service.
Coaching fit well, as Chad swapped navigating those jets for navigating the most jet-like players on pro football fields. “Exactly what I’m meant to do,” he says. “Same fuel.” He laughs.
During Stafford’s time in Detroit, Chad vacationed with his younger sister and his famous brother-in-law, traveling to Costa Rica and Mexico to recharge after another inevitable losing season in Detroit. Kelly isn’t sure exactly when she noticed the impact that her brother was having on her husband and vice versa. Each taught the other what made them different, and, in doing so, both found a sort of middle ground. Chad made Matthew a better quarterback. And Matthew made Chad a better coach, after he started with the Bills in 2017.
Chad provides a dual scouting report on the brother he never had. As a quarterback, Matthew “gets the ball out fast, knows where he’s going with it and can read the defense really well.” He reminds Chad of Josh Allen, in that both are “clever, witty, super smart and hilarious,” before they turn competitive as all hell. As a brother-in-law, Matthew is “great, always laughing, really up for any sort of adventure and great with kids.” His talents extend to chugging beers.
“Don’t have a bad thing to say about him,” Chad says.
In the winter of 2021, Matthew asked the Lions to move him to another team. They would. He and Kelly went to Cabo San Lucas to unwind, only to famously run into a contingent of Rams. Chad knew Clint Boling, the Georgia guard who connected Matthew that week with Andrew Whitworth, the Rams’ now retired left tackle who was also vacationing in Mexico. Chad also knew McVay, who had won Georgia state player of the year in ’03—over candidates like Chad and legendary wideout Calvin Johnson, another Stafford teammate. Did this help lead Stafford to the Rams and, by extension, the Rams to the pinnacle of the sport they shared? Let’s say this: It didn’t hurt.
By 2021, Chad and Matthew were brothers, no “like” necessary. So Chad, while coaching Bills wideouts such as Stefon Diggs, also stewed over criticism directed at his guy. The chatter registered as extreme. Matthew would lead the Rams to a title; it was certain. Or so went the reaction one week. Matthew would hold the Rams back from winning everything; it was certain. Or so the reaction went the next. Sometimes, Kelly called big bro to commiserate. “Chad is the only one who really gets it in my family,” she says. “It helps to have someone who can understand. I love my brother so much.”
Chad describes Matthew as “one of my best friends, loyal” and someone he can count on. Kelly and Matthew named one of their 5-year-old twin daughters Chandler, which is Chad’s full name, because of “how much he means to us,” Kelly says.
“I don’t think there’s a better guy for her,” Chad says.
When the Rams did make the Super Bowl—because of Stafford, not in spite of him—Chad sat with his sister and the rest of their family. He told Kelly he couldn’t wait to tell off Matthew’s critics. As the game unspooled, he studied Matthew’s parents, and he could see their nerves. He thought back to their workouts, the bonds the two had built. And when Matthew triumphed, after everything, Chad found the moment both “awesome” and “full circle.” He told the Staffords not to worry. He had a feeling—and he was right. No, this wasn’t the team he worked for. But it was hard to come up with a player more deserving of a ring, at least if the Bills weren’t going to win one. Yet.
Later that night, Chad and Matthew embraced, their bromance elevated to another level. Matthew thanked his brother-in-law, wrapping Chad in a long embrace. “He put a smile on my face,” Chad says, with one caveat. As the brother-in-law of a Super Bowl–winning quarterback, he loved Matthew’s drunken address to the frenzied crowd at the championship parade. Did he use that moment to rib his brother-in-law this past summer? Of course! “He earned it,” Chad says, “even if he probably doesn’t remember much.” He laughs again.
Chad did not ask McVay for a ring for whatever role, even a minor one, he may have played in Stafford’s arrival in Los Angeles. But he did plan to speak with Matthew, per their tradition, on Wednesday night. He continued hunting for the perfect song but didn’t plan out any trash talk, because he wanted to stay in the moment and let whatever he felt flow.
Examples from previous games are pretty amazing and speak to the family dynamic. Chad sent Matthew “San Francisco” from the Forrest Gump soundtrack before the Rams’ playoff opener last season and “All I Do Is Win” from DJ Khaled another week. Before the Super Bowl, he shipped “If I Can’t” by 50 Cent, while adding “this is YOUR moment! Trust your eyes, trust your feet, get it out and Take Care of the Ball baby! LETS F------ GO! Love You Man! …” Written like a brother and a coach. Conversely, Stafford sent “Walk This Way” by Aerosmith, Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind” and “Welcome to Atlanta” by Jermaine Dupri.
Andy Lyons/Getty Images
As opening night approached, both brother and sister fielded a million questions about Stafford’s nagging right elbow injury, which became a focal point for a national conversation. Both pointed to what Matthew told reporters. He will play without restrictions against the Bills.
His family will gather in the stands, their loyalties at least somewhat fractured for this one particular week. But not Kelly. She’s all Rams, all the way. “Wait, this is your blood you’re going up against,” her dad had told her recently. To which Kelly responded, “Dad, you’re my extended family now. Matthew is my husband.” They’re a long way from that bar in Athens. Kelly expects her parents and their siblings to wear some combination of gear from both teams. Like, say, a Rams shirt and a Bills hat.
For now, the all-in-the-family NFL opener presents questions for the Halls and Staffords that must be answered before kickoff. Will relatives in Bills gear be allowed in the family suite? Will the two brothers from other mothers ever figure out the bet?
While they sort it out, all remained certain of what would constitute success. Forget this regular-season contest. What if it’s Bills-Rams in Super Bowl LVII?
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