Kelly Stafford hates this part of her husband Matthew Stafford's NFL appearance

Originally published on E! Online

For Kelly Staffordobserved husband Matthew Stafford Leading the Los Angeles Rams is no walk in the park.

She loves cheering on her quarterback (and she admits, “They get paid ridiculously, we all know that”), but every time the 36-year-old athlete gets sacked, she gets sad.

“It is not easy to watch this sport,” The morning after The podcast host admitted in an exclusive interview with E! News. “Especially when you have a loved one on the field.”

She has accepted that a dislocated shoulder or a broken coccyx are part of the game. “I always say, 'Okay, you broke something, whatever. We'll figure it out,'” she said. However, the 35-year-old continued, “I'm worried about my head, because that's the only thing that [injury] People are pushing through when they shouldn’t.”

Although she recognizes that the league is trying to develop a plan to prevent such head injuries, she is still concerned.

“The longer you play, the more hits you get,” she noted. “And he's in his 16th year. That's a heavy burden on my mind every time I go to play. That's one of the reasons I'm so nervous.”

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And she's not the only one on her team who flinches every time Number 9 takes a nosedive.

With 7-year-old twins Sawyer And Chandler at most games, together with younger sisters hunter6 and Tyler4, “My two older ones have started to really notice when Dad is slow to get back up after a hit,” Kelly revealed. “One of my oldest asked last year if he had to play again because he got hit so many times in one game. And I think that really bothered him.”

So Kelly calls the plays off the field. “You have to tell your kids, 'He's OK, he's OK,'” she explained her strategy. “But you don't know it yet. It's just something you have to deal with.”

Because even though she's been her husband's best teammate since cheering him on as a cheerleader at the University of Georgia, “at the end of the day, I want my husband to be who he was when I met him and married him after he's finished playing and helped me raise these girls,” Kelly noted. “We have a whole life after the NFL.”

But she also understands that the 2022 Super Bowl champion “is a player. He wants to be there and play to his ability.”

So as his contract with the Rams entered a new year, Kelly said, “That's something I remind him of when the season really gets going: Just do your best to stay healthy and run as fast as you can.”

If he forgets that particular play, she fully intends to shout such sounds from her seat at Ford Field in Detroit, where Matthew will face his old team on September 8.

It will also be a homecoming for Kelly, who opened her own season the night before with the first stop at her and her podcast co-host's home. Hank Winchester's Cleat Chaser Tour.

Kelly gave her and Hank a chance to meet their listeners in real life. “It's about life,” she said of the schedule for her six-day tour. “It's about parenting. There might be a little football in there, but mostly it's about having a fun night, having a few cocktails with friends and having a lot of laughs.”

The name refers to the fact that at the live events, we will “literally chase my husband's soccer cleats across the country” the day before Matthews Rams face their opponents.

But it's also a not-so-subtle nod to the label that the University of Georgia nursing student has been stuck with since she first made contact with the school's star quarterback in the mid-2000s.

“Honestly, I've been called that my whole life, which is really interesting,” Kelly explained. “We focus so much on the men in this equation that people forget that I played four different sports growing up. I was surrounded by athletes in my family.”

And although she knows that she has fallen in love with the man inside the cleats while playing basketball on campus. “I honestly think it's pretty funny,” she said of the joke. “They say, 'Really, she called it that? Well, I called it that.'”

If anyone has a problem with that, well, she gets a few better at dealing with whatever internet trolls might throw at them.

“My feelings get hurt,” she admitted. “I'm not going to sit here and say, 'Yeah, I don't care what they say about me.' I do care. I'm actually very into pleasing people. So I've had a lot of trouble with that.”

But she does her best to deal with these feelings.

“I have a husband who is very calm,” Kelly noted. “And it's actually helpful to see him just letting it all slide, like, 'Oh, what the heck.'”

If she needs a reminder to block out the noise, she has a great teammate.

“Matthew is such a calming force in my life,” Kelly said. “I feel like I carry a lot of stress around with me and he just calms me down and he's an incredible man in a lot of ways.”

She, in turn, does her part to remind him that he is more than just an accurate throwing arm.

“I give him the push that he might need and recognize that he's more than a football player, because I feel like sometimes they get lost in that too,” said Kelly, who remains active at the SAY Detroit Play Center. “We just balance each other out.”

Before Matthew and his fellow Rams take the field, check out how he supports his team off the field.

Welcome Home

Fall in love

Birthday party

Summer days

Fans No. 1

Rest and recharge your batteries

Go blue

Playing time

Family matters