Am I the only one who is not sold on Bradford.

[eldfan]

It’s hard to get a read on Bradford. He is accurate but any quarter back worth his weight can be accurate if he has enough time which he want get allot of in the NFL. The rams must be concern about his shoulder you never know if it is worse than he is letting on. Who knows he has admitted his shoulder is 85% which leaves me to believe it’s likely worse, he wants to put his best case forward after all allot of money is on the line if he is pick # 1. But my biggest concern is that the rams may reach on need and not take the BPA.

[01d 0rd3r]

"Sold" on him? No, absolutly not, I personally think that we should take Suh with the first pick and pick LeFevour with the 3rd as our QB of the future. However, I would not mind if we drafted him with the first.

[PeoriaRam]

Does it really matter why they didn't pick up more talent in advance of that terrible season? The point is that the Falcons were basically rebuilding for the post-Vick era when they drafted Ryan. They weren't an especially talented team that just needed a quarterback to complete the puzzle. They drafted the left tackle that would be protecting Ryan later in the same draft! They drafted a defensive tackle the year after they drafted Ryan. The Falcons model for rebuilding actually supports the idea that a quarterback could potentially come in and make an immediate difference, even if all of the pieces aren't there.

Loosing Vick, their quarterback and offensive focal point gutted a very effective offense. In lieu of Vick, Atlanta had a rotating cast of Joey Harrington, Byron Leftwich, and Chris Redman at QB that season. All of them are very bad quarterbacks, none had enough time to establish consistency, and that is why a team that had a pretty good offense fell off the face of the planet.

[Nick]

To answer the original post, I'm not sold on Bradford because I have serious concerns as to whether or not he can hold up to the punishment an NFL quarterback is going to take.

In 31 games at the college level, he was sacked only 25 times. But he sustained three injuries during this span - a concussion in 2007, torn ligaments in his hand in 2008, and the AC joint injury in 2009. Despite being relatively well protected for his entire college career, he's not been able to play an entire season without getting hurt in some fashion.

I think he has a lot of good attributes and strengths for the next level. I feel he's the best quarterback in this class. But it's just really tough to take a guy with his injury history in his circumstances with the first overall pick and give him a $70-80 million deal, especially when you're passing up two potentially elite DTs to take him. The Rams need a QB, and Bradford is the best in this class. I understand the reasoning behind taking him, and I'm not going to be angry if he's the pick.

But because of my questions about his durability, I'd prefer to see the Rams go Suh or McCoy before taking Bradford. I just think Sam's too big a risk at this point, but some will argue you miss out on the greatest rewards if you don't take those risks from time to time.

The Falcons won 4 games the season before they got Ryan. I wouldn't exactly argue that they were a "talent-driven" team at the time.

The Falcons averaged eight wins a season for the three seasons prior to 2007. In 2007, they fired Mora, lost Vick, and hired a head coach that would eventually quit on them.

They weren't nearly as depleted of talent as the Rams are now, IMO. And when they drafted Ryan, they protected him with an efficient offensive line and one of the league's strongest running attacks.

The Falcons rushed the ball 560 times that season; I don't think the Rams have come within 100 attempts of that total in the last decade.

How isn't Bradford NFL ready? He's taken plenty of snaps under center in practice and 30 percent or more snaps under center in games.

Do you have a source for that percentage? I'm just curious as to how that was quantified.

Maybe they didn't win a ton, but what can you do when your defense lets up 30 something points a game.

There were more than a few games where Clausen either could have won it at the end and failed, or could have helped his team with better quarterbacking. Go back and watch the games against Pitt, USC, Navy, and UConn. They didn't lose these games solely because of poor defense.

That's a good point. OU was ranked in the top 5 in a lot of the pre-season rankings, but when Bradford went down, they tanked. That kind of says he was a little more than a system quarterback.

I don't follow you at all there. The fact that Landry Jones wasn't able to equal the kind of production Sam Bradford achieve simply shows that he wasn't as effective at running the offense as Bradford was.

I'm not saying I agree with those who say he's only a system quarterback, but I'm also not sure how you can conclude that it demonstrates that he is more than that. If anything, it demonstrates how effective he was at running the system. But I don't think the lack of success achieved by the Jones-led Sooners indicates Bradford will definitely succeed outside of it.

[Goldenfleece]

The Falcons averaged eight wins a season for the three seasons prior to 2007. In 2007, they fired Mora, lost Vick, and hired a head coach that would eventually quit on them.

They weren't nearly as depleted of talent as the Rams are now, IMO. And when they drafted Ryan, they protected him with an efficient offensive line and one of the league's strongest running attacks.

The Falcons rushed the ball 560 times that season; I don't think the Rams have come within 100 attempts of that total in the last decade.

I'll agree that the running game took the pressure off, but my point is that at the end of 2007, they determined that they needed a quarterback, a left tackle, and #1 runningback. On defense, their star player from years past, Patrick Kerney, was gone. Milloy and Brooking weren't going to be around much longer, and DeAngelo Hall had seemingly taken a few steps backward. They had and still do have a number of needs on the defensive side of the ball. Maybe they had some more talent on the team because they didn't blow the thing up and dump all of the veterans, as we did.

But they also didn't wait to find out whether Turner could be a true #1 or whether Baker would be effective as a rookie. They went ahead and got their quarterback without knowing whether their offensive line was going to be that efficient or their running game that reliable. As it turned out, they were able to protect their quarterback, but it was because of moves made in the same off-season that they acquired him.

I don't follow you at all there. The fact that Landry Jones wasn't able to equal the kind of production Sam Bradford achieve simply shows that he wasn't as effective at running the offense as Bradford was.

I'm not saying I agree with those who say he's only a system quarterback, but I'm also not sure how you can conclude that it demonstrates that he is more than that. If anything, it demonstrates how effective he was at running the system. But I don't think the lack of success achieved by the Jones-led Sooners indicates Bradford will definitely succeed outside of it.

What I'm getting at is that people often talk about a system guy as someone who just happens to play on an offense that always puts up big numbers. You might say that about Hawaii, where Timmy Chang put up crazy high numbers and then Colt Brennan stepped in and immediately started putting wild numbers, too. My point is that the drop-off between Bradford and the rest of the quarterbacks on the roster was tremendous. He might have benefited from the system, but he was also clearly very talented as well.