Rams Win Super Bowl, Former AAF QB Wolford Earns Ring

Football the ultimate team sport! Twenty-Two men on a field coming together in order to achieve a common goal. While often times many fans will concentrate on the players on the field on gameday, occasionally, you’ll hear a color commentator discuss about the prep work done by the backup QB leading up to the game. This week that backup QB who ran the winning team’s scout team was John Wolford, and now he’s a Super Bowl Champion.

Wolford is a former spring league QB, who is Matthew Stafford’s back up. After getting cut by the Jets in 2018, Wolford would join the AAF in 2019, in which he would put up impressive numbers with the Arizona Hotshots, throwing Fourteen touchdowns in seven games. Wolford’s time in the AAF allowed him to earn two player of the week awards in addition to an opportunity with Rams in the summer of 2019.

Wolford’s opportunity would not go to waste as he would has been with the Rams since being signed from the Hotshots. In 2020 he eventually became a starter while Jared Goff was injured and would go on to succeed in a must-win situation that led the Rams to a playoff berth. That performance would cement Wolford as the No.2 quarterback for the 2021 season on a Superbowl winning team.

Wolford wasn’t the only member of the Rams to play in an alternative football league. Defensive Line Coach Eric Henderson was a member of the Las Vegas Locomotives (09-11) of the United Football League and won two championships with the team. Players like Wolford and Coach Henderson show the NFL’s need for another league for players and coaches to garner experience instead of meandering in practice squad anonymity.

With the USFL set to kick off in a couple months, it’s only inventible that more players will continue transition to the NFL upon completion of the inaugural season. As we have seen multiple times many players from alternative leagues continue to make impacts both on and off the field for NFL teams. The transaction of John Wolford and his ability to remain on the roster in such an intricate role for three seasons shows that spring football yields an opportunity for lesser-known prospects to prove they belong.