Huddled around a small monitor inside a modest hobby shop near the Santa Monica Mountains, Andrew Goodman and Brian Terwilliger each cracked small smiles.
Matthew Stafford had just improvised a line in front of cameras, and Goodman and Terwilliger, Topps executives who help oversee storytelling campaigns for the card giant, just couldn’t believe it.
“He is,” Terwilliger whispered to his partner on set, “a great actor.”
Goodman, Terwilliger and the rest of Topps’ leadership had longed for the moment with the Rams quarterback since early February, after he won the NFL’s MVP award.
The collectibles company, following an agreement with the NFL to make it the league’s new exclusive trading card licensee, had planned to institute an “MVP Buyback” program for 2026 in which fans could trade in select Stafford cards into local hobby shops for store credit, and they wanted Stafford to be the star of a commercial promoting it.
“Matthew was an obvious choice since he is, in fact, the MVP,” Goodman told the California Post.
Yet once they got Stafford to sign on to appear before their lenses, no one quite knew what they would get from the 38-year-old until he showed up to the set they had created at UFC announcer Bruce Buffer’s “It’s Time” in Agoura Hills.
But quickly on this warm day in late March, Stafford showed his talents extended far beyond 100-yard football fields.
The ad required the three-time Pro Bowler to stumble into a hobby shop with a buddy, before he had to act as if he was shocked to then see his “Aunt Amy” trading in his cards.
The Los Angeles signal caller filmed three different scenes over roughly two hours, and in nearly every one, he was asked to do multiple takes.
And, to the pleasure of Goodman and Terwilliger, he nailed his lines flawlessly almost every time.
“Incredibly comfortable,” Goodman said of the NFL vet’s acting chops.
One spot in particular truly seemed to stun the room. Stafford was talking with the actor who was playing his traitorous family member, when he suddenly appeared to go off script.
He muttered a line, then extended his hand for a high-five.
It was all met with a big cheer and a thunderous, “Nice take everybody!” from one of the scene’s directors.
Stafford joked with The Post that his good performance merely came from him “faking it” well, though he admitted that being in front of the camera is a place he’s feeling more and more comfortable after doing 10–15 commercials in his career.
It also helped that the script called for him to be a bit self-deprecating.
“It’s fun,” Stafford said. “I definitely do a lot better in comedic stuff than I do trying to be serious and drama. So, this is poking fun at me, which I’m all about.”
The commercial officially dropped Monday, and card collectors everywhere can now score store credit at participating hobby shops for their Stafford 2025 Topps Chrome Football cards.
Base cards start at $20, and high-level parallels can go for as much as $200, Topps officials said.
“It’s really cool,” Stafford said of the program and its accompanying commercial. “It’s a cool way to get people involved and get people almost reinvolved, right?
“They get to bring stuff that they’ve bought in previous years back in, and gets them to start looking at and talking about cards again and doing all that kind of stuff.”
California Post News: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, YouTube, WhatsApp, LinkedInCalifornia Post Sports Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, XCalifornia Post Opinion California Post Newsletters: Sign up here!California Post App: Download here!Home delivery: Sign up here!Page Six Hollywood: Sign up here!
