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http://mmqb.si.com/2014/08/25/seattle-seahawks-repeat-super-bowl-prediction/2/
Once the 2014 season concludes, Sam Bradford will have played 49 regular-season games and sat out 31 in his first five years in the league. (Joe Robbins/Getty Images)
Sam Bradford’s a very rich man. And right now, he doesn’t care.
EARTH CITY, Mo. — This was 12 days ago, on a bench next to the St. Louis Rams practice field, and quarterback Sam Bradford, healed, feeling like a million bucks, was talking about what it felt like to tear the ACL in his left knee last October in Charlotte and adjust to life without football.
“You don’t feel a part of the team,” he said. “The first couple weeks, especially, were really tough. It happens out of the blue. You’ve got to wait for the swelling to go down before they can do the surgery, and you’re not rehabbing, you’re not practicing, you’ve got nothing to focus on. You go from life being about football for 14, 16 hours a day to just sitting there, waiting. And in games, you’re not playing—just telling [backup] Kellen Clemens what you see out there. After a while, just to get through it, you act like it’s not really happening. That’s how I tried to deal with it.”
I asked him: “Carson Palmer and a few other quarterbacks who’ve come back from an ACL say they feel a little nervous the first few times there’s traffic around their legs. They get nervous they’re going to get hit. How about you?”
“Haven’t felt that at all yet,” he said. “Of course, I’ve got the red [non-contact] jersey on, so it hasn’t happened yet. I’ll have to wait for my first couple of games, to see how I feel.”
We’ve got to go on,” Rams coach Jeff Fisher said, “and that’s basically what I told Shaun Hill: ‘This is why you’re here. Let’s go.’
Game two. Saturday night. Cleveland. Defensive lineman Armonty Bryant comes off the edge, coming at Bradford’s left side, and as Bradford throws, Bryant slams into Bradford; the view is not perfect on tape, but the left knee hyperextends under the weight of Bryant’s hit, and Bradford falls to the ground. Traffic, the kind a red-jersey-wearing quarterback never sees in training camp, and a hit.
“My knee,’’ Bradford said, wincing, when the trainers got out there.
MRI early Sunday morning. A couple hours later, a trainer called Jeff Fisher and said, “Come on down to the trainer’s room.’’ Fisher knew that was bad. If it was good news on Bradford, the trainer would have said, “He’s fine.” And when Fisher got in the room, there was the trainer and Bradford. “I could tell,” Fisher said Sunday night from St. Louis. “I could sense it, and feel it in the room.” And Fisher said something to Bradford like, You worked so hard. This should not have happened. Bradford left, to spend the day with his parents, to try to come to grips with a second straight year with the same knee ripped up. The only good news: The ACL is torn, but nothing else in the knee, apparently, is damaged. He should be able to return whole in 2015. Where? Who knows.
“We’ve got to go on,” Fisher said, “and that’s basically what I told [backup] Shaun Hill. Shaun shifts gears, and we go. I told him, ‘This is why you’re here. Let’s go.’
The Rams will rely on the right arm of Shaun Hill to keep their offense on schedule. (G. Newman Lowrance/AP)
“But,” Fisher said, “obviously I’ve been through this before, and you never get used to it. Never. It’s terrible. I took this job for two reasons: Mr. [Stan] Kroenke, the owner, and Sam, a really good starting quarterback. Now we don’t have him. And he’s facing a grueling rehab. It’s tough.”
Hill is 34. He’s started 26 games (13-13) with San Francisco and Detroit—but his last start was four seasons ago. In his last three years backing up Matthew Stafford with the Lions, Hill has thrown 12 passes. Hs career arc is interesting. An un-recruited quarterback at Parsons (Kans.) High School, Hills was offered a scholarship to punt for Pittsburg (Kans.) State. He went to junior college instead, earned a starting quarterback job, and played well enough to get a full ride at Maryland for his last two college seasons. Undrafted, he made the Vikings as a third-stringer, meandered through NFL Europe, and played for the Niners and Lions mostly as a backup. His arm is average at best, though Fisher said Sunday night, “We think Shaun can make the throws Sam makes.” We’ll see.
I feel sure they won’t pay a ransom for a Mark Sanchez, one of the league’s hottest quarterbacks this summer, even if Philadelphia decided to make him available. (A ransom being a second- or third-round pick. Not smart for a guy you might have only one year.) The Rams will monitor cut quarterbacks and may sign one to back up Hill, or to compete with Hill or backup Austin Davis. But I didn’t get the sense talking to Rams people Sunday that this was a priority, because Hill’s been in the system for five months and a newbie wouldn’t be familiar.
Now the Rams have to confront reality. They will have to send out their college scouts (who already would have watched quarterbacks this fall) to work extra hard on the crop of passers, on Marcus Mariota and Brett Hundley and the others, because now quarterback is certainly in play for 2015. By the end of this season, Bradford would have started 49 NFL games and sat for 31 of them, and made $65 million in the process; his was the last silly rookie contract before the new CBA made rookie salary rich but not kooky. Regardless of the reasons for missing those 31 games, St. Louis will have to look at replacing Bradford. That’s the cruel reality of the game, and Bradford’s just 26 years old. When—if—he takes the first snap for the Rams in the 2015 season, it will be 23 months from the time he played a football game that counted.
There is a saying on the whiteboard in Rams general manager Les Snead’s office. “Build to dominate using Redskin picks!” it reads. The Rams made the mega-trade with Washington in 2012 that allowed their NFC neighbor to draft Robert Griffin III. The Rams, meanwhile, thought they had their quarterback of the future, and didn’t draft one until the sixth round this year in SMU’s Garrett Gilbert. And now those picks are gone.
MORE RAMS: The MMQB’s St. Louis training camp page
Fisher has won with lesser players before. The Titans signed Kerry Collins in 2006 as quarterback insurance, and he ended up winning nine starts in 2008. Hill certainly will have some talent around him on offense, but in the NFC West, the Rams’ road just got loaded with potholes. The Rams hope they’re not drafting in the high franchise-quarterback neighborhood in 2015. But without Bradford, again, a high pick next year is much more likely than a high finish this year.
TEN THINGS I THINK I THINK
6. I think the Rams deserve tremendous credit for their attention to the schools and football teams in riot-torn Ferguson. The team invited players from the schools that service students in Ferguson to their game nine days ago, and then invited the players from the school our Robert Klemko wrote about in The MMQB, McCluer High School, to come to practice last Wednesday. They watched practice, provided faux crowd noise when coach Jeff Fisher asked for it (to help the offense deal with crowd noise during the season), and then practiced in the team’s indoor practice facility afterward. A class move by a team trying to put some salve on an open wound in the community.
9. I think it’s going to be hard to stash Michael Sam on the practice squad. Hard, but not impossible. With two sacks this month and more quickness than he showed late in his college season (he’s 13 pounds lighter, at 257, than his college playing weight), Sam is pushing hard for a spot on the Rams’ 53-man roster. If not that, certainly the 10-man practice squad. But the Rams know they risk losing him if they put him on the practice squad. NFL rules allow for players to be exposed to other teams before they can be put on the practice squad. I’m sure some teams wouldn’t want to deal with a perceived sideshow with Sam and wouldn’t put in a claim. But where exactly has the sideshow been? Sam’s been the anti-distraction since turning down the Oprah reality show in the spring.
THE ADIEU HAIKU
I know Bradford some.
I’m quite sure he’d trade millions
to be whole right now.
