This story is part of Peak, The Athletic’s desk covering the mental side of sports. Sign up for Peak’s newsletter here.

Chase Daniel played quarterback for 14 years in the NFL, including with the Detroit Lions and Matthew Stafford. On Thursday, Stafford was named NFL MVP.

When I went to the Detroit Lions in 2020, I had been around quarterbacks like Drew Brees and Alex Smith. Alex is extremely bright, one of those guys with insane recall who doesn’t need to study. Drew is obviously a first-ballot Hall of Famer.

I was a backup quarterback, and my whole mindset during my career was always: How can I become the smartest player in the NFL? I’d been around Andy Reid for three years. I’d been around Sean Payton for three years. So I thought I knew a lot.

Then I shared a QB room with Matthew Stafford.

I was blown away by his smarts and his instincts off the field. The way he studied, his recall and how his brain worked. It was the Covid year so we were just in the QB room, studying away.

When you install a play during the offseason, you usually go: Here is the first progression. Here is the second progression. Here is the third. Here is what we’re going to do against cover 4.

But with Matthew, our offensive coordinator and quarterback coach would flip up a play on the screen, and he would talk through the play, and I’d sit there thinking: I’ve never viewed it that way, and I’ve been around all of these genius offensive minds.

It’s really difficult for me to explain, but he would almost reverse engineer a play. I’d ask, “What are you thinking here? Post vs. quarters?” And Matthew would be like: “No, no, let me do this. Let’s actually force them to be in quarters coverage. How about we add this motion and add a different personnel group to make them show us that look?”

He is the smartest quarterback I’ve ever been around.

Matthew takes copious amounts of notes. It was crazy. He had an iPad that had the playbook, and he had another iPad where he’d write down his notes. And he was just constantly taking notes.

What makes it crazy to me is that Matthew has a photographic memory. He didn’t really need to prepare that way. But he had a unique ability to take 10 pages of notes, boil them down to one page and simplify it all in his mind so on game day he could play fast. A lot of quarterbacks can’t do that. A lot of them get so bogged down with details that they can’t play fast. And that’s what takes good quarterbacks to great.

Can you simplify and react? You spend all this time preparing – and then you might use 15 percent of it. You might get the perfect coverage for the perfect play once every two games. I always thought that he did such a good job of living in the gray.

To be a great quarterback, you can’t be black and white. You can’t just think: I’m going to get this version of cover three and throw an out route. It just doesn’t happen like that. I played for 14 years. I can tell you maybe 20 or 30 times where we practiced a play during the week against the scout team defense and in the game the other team gave us the exact look we wanted to throw a wide-open touchdown. So, how are you as a quarterback when stuff is not exactly as it seems?

Quarterbacks who don’t live in the gray freeze. Well, coach told me to do that! They try to play the game like the lines on the paper during the week. Sometimes you just have to think players over plays. Oh, I don’t think it’s there, but let’s just throw it to Puka Nacua. Matthew understood that.

Quarterbacks who live in the gray are the ones who thrive. And Matthew did such a good job of walking that line. He was so prepared going into a game, but he also could react in the moment to whatever was going on. Very rarely is it ever black and white. That’s what makes sports so great: You can prepare for something and it might be completely different in the game. How are you going to react? How are you going to live in the gray?

Matthew was the best at that. That was the most impressive thing to me.

— As told to Jayson Jenks