Pictures of two chubby boys from Dallas, Texas make a sensation in the US after Sunday’s Super Bowl. This is Matthew Stafford and Clayton Kershaw. They are both very famous men today. They are 33 years old, with a total of half a billion dollars in earnings, and two championship titles that will shut the mouths of critics. Both were accused of not withstanding the pressure in the most important matches.
The best school for athletes in Texas. It started there
They went to one Highland Park High School. There they played basketball, pik non, baseball and American football in the same team. Kershaw was the center of the latter sport, giving a spade to the quarterback – quarterback Stafford at the start of the service. On the other hand, in baseball, Stafford was sometimes an apper of Kershaw’s pitcher, although more often he plays behind his back as the so-called. teapot.
The school had an excellent opinion of its sports program. In 2005, when both future stars attended, it was ranked No. 1 nationally. It was ranked 16th nationally.
They both became famous in high school. Stafford in 2005 will lead the team to 15 wins in 15 games of the season. And since the people of Texas live by the 3F rule (football, family, faith – football, family, faith), there were thousands of people attending Stafford games. As his team faced Stephenville High School led by Jevan Snead – another quarterback considered a great talent – 21,000 spectators sat in the stands. It is worth emphasizing once again that it was a high school team match. Highland Park won 34:31.
Kershaw was recognized as the greatest talent in high school baseball teams that same year. USA Today recognizes him as High School Player of the Year with 13 victories and no failure in the season as a pitcher. They also had a “perfect game”, a match in which they will not give their rivals a single base. Eliminate 15 packers of the opposing team from the game. The match will end prematurely due to the so-called The “rules of mercy”, according to which the last rounds are not played at a high difference of points, so that he no longer humiliates the loser by increasing the advantage.
Kershaw was the first to earn money. Stafford went to college
The first money was earned by Kershaw, who declined to play at the university and volunteered for an MLB baseball draft. He was selected with no. 7 by the Los Angeles Dodgers, and for the mere signing of the contract, he will get $ 2.3 million.
Stafford had no such possibility. The professional NFL does not hire football players who have not played for a college team for a minimum of three years. So he became a student at Georgia University and played for the local Bulldogs for three years before being elected with no. 1 in a draft by Detroit Lions. With the NFL teams, he signs a six-year contract for $ 78 million.
At the same time, Kershaw is starting his second season in MLB. Earlier, he spent two years on the so-called farms, or teams associated with the Dodgers in lower leagues.
Both of them soon became the stars of two of the most popular sports leagues in the USA – the NFL and MLB. Kershaw wins the best pitcher in his league (Cy Young Award) three times. Once he was elected MVP – the best player – National League. Eight times he was selected for the star match. Stafford will break several NFL records.
They made a total of $ 1 billion. Each of them has almost half of this amount
Their excellent game was confirmed in the gigantic contracts they signed. In 2014, Kershaw signed a seven-year contract with the Dodgers for $ 215 million (30.7 million per season). In 2017, Stafford signed a contract with Detroit for 135 million dollars for five years of the game (27 million for the season). The former will earn a total of $ 251 million in his career. And he currently has the status of a free agent. The latter has already $ 239 million, and a further 23 will earn this year if he completes the Los Angeles Rams deal, where he will be delivered in 2021.
With all the great fame and cosmic money, one hurt both of them like a stone in a shoe. Both have not won the championship in their leagues for a very long time. Both of them were assigned the patches of players who did not perform well in the game under the greatest pressure.
Kershaw has been reprimanded for two disastrous World Series appearances. The first is the 2017 finals, when Kerhshaw, playing 4 and 2/3 rounds, will give his rivals as many as six points. The second is the 2018 finale, when he scored five points over four rounds in the first game against the Boston Red Sox, then conceded four points over seven rounds in Game 5. It was then that the Red Sox sealed their World Series victory.
Kershaw was the first sign for the championship
The breakthrough finally came in 2020. At the moment when a breakthrough is hardly expected. Kershaw, despite having been struggling with injuries for two years, was in the playoffs. In the World Series 2020, in match # 1, he will only give one point over six rounds. In match # 5, he will lose two points in the 5th and 2/3 rounds. His Dodgers defeated the Tampa Bay Rays in six games and Kershaw was finally enjoying the championship.
Stafford, if he could, cheered on a colleague from the stands at a Los Angeles stadium.
Stafford did not have so many opportunities to play for the highest goals. The Lions turned out to be a team the managers were unable to provide him with adequate support. He has only had the opportunity to play in the playoffs three times in 12 seasons and will jump all three in the first round. So when LA Rams champions last January brought in Stafford in exchange for their quarterback Jard Goff and three draft elections, many pundits pointed out that they were taking a player who had never won a play-off game.
One of the doubts whether Stafford was up to the task was Kurt Warner, who was an accomplished quarterback in the past and today is a popular game analyst on the NFL Network. – Expectations for him are very high, because you know how great his talent is and how great the players next to him are. We’ll see him play at important moments, in high-stakes matches. Because you know as well as I do that there are a lot of really good players in this league who aren’t great at times like this. Stafford was given a chance to prove to us that he was not part of that group, Warner said in November in the Rich Eisen Show podcast.
Super Bowl for Stafford, Kershaw is watching it from the stands
Stafford would pass the exam perfectly. In the second play-off round, his team will squander the lead 27: 3. It was a draw 40 seconds before the end of the game and Stafford led an offensive series that ended with decisive points scoring when the clock read 0:00. In the so-called The conference finals, i.e. the final before the Super Bowl, the offensive led by Stafford this time made up for the losses (7:17 at the beginning of the fourth quarter), and Rams scored the decisive points for the victory minutes and 46 seconds before the end of the game.
History repeated itself in the Super Bowl. There, those in Rams were making up for losses and a decisive punch after Stafford’s pass. Los Angeles team defeated Cincinnati Bengals 23:20.
Kershaw was at the game and a fan friend from his childhood.
They both started at Highland Park, both won championships in Los Angeles. This story is not material for a movie or series. Only who would believe that such a banal finale of this story would really happen.
Source: Sport
Tristin is an accomplished author and journalist, known for his in-depth and engaging writing on sports. He currently works as a writer at 247 News Agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the sports industry.
