Matthew Stafford’s absence from the Los Angeles’ Rams preseason training earlier this month sent tongues wagging around the league.
The quarterback sparked fears among fans when he was absent from camp with a reported aggravated disc in his back, which forced him to miss most of preseason action.
Despite the 37-year-old practicing for the first time this week, some NFL fans have circulated some bizarre theories about his absence. Namely that he has died.
A Barstool Sports headline this week read, ‘The Best NFL conspiracy theory on the internet – Matthew Stafford died a couple weeks ago, got cloned, new one is now QB1 for the Rams.’
And Stafford’s wife Kelly weighed in on the wild conspiracy theory on Instagram this week.
‘I knew there was something different about him….that @ammortal_official is wild,’ the podcast host wrote on her Instagram story Thursday, while sharing the Barstool headline.
Matthew Stafford’s wife Kelly replied to a wild theory that her husband had died
The Rams quarterback missed practice earlier this month after suffering pain in his back
The mother-of-four tagged Ammortal Inc, a company that her husband uses for their Ammortal Chamber, which is ‘the fastest way to reset, recharge and rejuvenate the body, mind and spirit,’ according to its website.
Despite zero evidence, the wilder corners of social media have weirdly speculated that Stafford has passed away and that his clone is now suiting up as QB1 for Sean McVey’s team.
Earlier this month, the Super Bowl champion and two-time Pro Bowler visited a back specialist for further advice as the Rams called him ‘week-to-week’ despite insisting that he would be fit and ready for Week 1 of the upcoming season.
Yet, McVey said that Stafford was 100 percent a full participant in training this week after her returned to the field on Monday.
While Stafford didn’t go into specifics about the injury when discussing it with reporters on Thursday, he did reveal that it was something that crept up on me a little bit.’
‘Backs are sometimes interesting things,’ Stafford said. ‘It’s not cut and dry what’s what and how you’re going to feel, so I really appreciate our team and our head coach and everybody taking a day-to-day approach with me doing everything they can to try and help me out.
‘And I have obviously a huge feeling of responsibility to our team to do what’s right by them and I’m trying to do that as best I can day in and day out.’
Stafford will be entering his 17th NFL season whenever he takes the field, but he appears to be in far-from-ideal health just a few weeks out from Week 1.
Some fans claimed that Stafford had passed away and that his clone was playing for the Rams
Last season, he led the Rams to a Divisional round appearance, where he and his teammates fell to the eventual Super Bowl champions, the Philadelphia Eagles.
Backup Jimmy Garoppolo has been running the Rams’ offense in the early practices, while the Rams also added quarterback Dresser Winn to the roster.
Stafford is playing this season with a substantial $44m raise after a second straight offseason of financial discontent.
This dispute was resolved more quickly than last year’s standoff, and Stafford participated in the Rams’ offseason workout programs to begin forming a bond with new receiver Davante Adams.
