Kelly Stafford said this week she “lost who I was” after dealing with social media pressure.
E! News asked the wife of Los Angeles Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford if she had advice for NFL wives and girlfriends. Stafford, who hosts the Morning After podcast, said she would tell them not to listen to critics on social media.
“Something that I wish someone would have told me coming into this is: ‘Don’t lose yourself,’” she said. “I would say, ‘Don’t try to become the person that everybody else wants you to become.’ Because that’s what I did and I lost who I was. And that goes with personality, looks, all of it.”
Stafford, who met her future husband while they were students at the University of Georgia, has been her own worst enemy in fueling social media critics on several occasions. In June, she admitted on the Off the Vine podcast that she had dated Matthew Stafford’s backup quarterback at Georgia, just to “p*** him off.”
Stephen A. Smith spoke for many when he called out Kelly Stafford: “What possible advantage could you peel from that?”
Early in the 2023 season, she caused a stir after saying her 35-year-old husband had trouble relating to younger Rams players.
Those kinds of comments generated social media feedback, and much of it was not positive for Kelly Stafford. She said being the wife of an NFL star in general can bring criticism.
“You’re going to have everyone telling you what you should look like, what you should say and not say, all of these things,” she said. “And if you start listening, you lose the values and everything you have that makes you who you are, and makes you the person your husband fell in love with.
“You can’t cancel out all the noise, but try to listen to yourself before you listen to anybody else.”
