I’ve been a Minnesota Vikings fan since I was a kid. Don’t hold it against me. Growing up in southeastern Idaho there were few good choices. Everyone around us seemed to lean either toward the Seattle Seahawks or the Denver Broncos, the two closest teams geographically.
I also won my Fantasy Football League Championship as a kid, and Sam Bradford was my backup quarterback for a while. I played him once. For the most part, Aaron Rodgers took me through the season. Still, I kept my eye closely on Bradford and his receivers. Even when he was winning, though, he wasn’t putting up the fantasy numbers I needed, and I dropped him about mid-season. He might have been okay in Game 17, but I certainly don’t regret sticking with the Packers QB, even though it’s hard for a Minnesota fan to ever root for Green Bay.
Sam Bradford: Vikings Quarterback of the Future?
It’s hard to be a Vikings fan. We’ve had a rough couple of decades. Finding a reliable quarterback has been problematic. Teddy Bridgewater came along and we all had some hope, until August 30, a day that will live in infamy. Our hope went down with a season destroying knee injury. Enter Sam Bradford.
Third team in six years? Injury prone? This guy is our hope? The guy who, even though he signed a contract extension in Philly, watched them trade up to draft Carson Wentz with the second pick? Who held himself out of voluntary off-season workouts, a foolhardy no-leverage move at best, and made it clear he wanted to be traded?
Yes, that’s the guy. Also, the guy who learned a Norv Turner offense well enough to run it in two short weeks, and took the Vikes to 5-0 after a rout of the Texans. But what happened the rest of the season that caused them to finish 8-8?
Turner resigned November second after trying to implement his deep route offense led to 11 Bradford sacks and a few horrible games. This wasn’t entirely on Turner. The offensive line was banged up and leaked like the Titanic when she kissed an iceberg.
The Vikings changed up the offense to a West Coast style under interim offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur, and it worked. Bradford put up some amazing stats. He set the all-time completion percentage record in Week 17, and a Daunte Culpepper record of more than 379 completions in a season.
However, what about next year? Bradford refused to speculate. As the season wore on, many teams began to exploit his weaknesses, one of which was picking a target and sticking with it no matter how the play progressed.
The Contract
Bradford has a contract for next year, but the Vikings could buy him out of it in March for four million dollars. But where would they go from there if Bridgewater is not ready to start in September? They’ve got a great backup in Shaun Hill, but he should probably retire. They could start with Taylor Heinicke as a backup, but at only six-foot-one he went undrafted because no one thinks he has NFL arm strength.
Still, if he could be trained, he could be a great find for Minnesota. Or they could look at younger free agents. Or they could look to draft a quarterback in the late rounds of the draft, although they probably have better places to go with those picks.
So if they sign Bradford to a longer contract and trade Bridgewater, fans and players alike could be pretty ticked off. Even if Bridgewater comes back, will his legs still be the factor they once were before his knee injury?
Mental Toughness
Bradford’s mental toughness has been questioned, over and over. Shurmur responds “”Not mentally tough? He’s tough as nails. He got injured, and sometimes there’s nothing you can do about that,” he says. “Along the way, he’s taken some hits and matured as a pro.”
Obviously, he’s smart, with a mind for the game. Learning Norv Turner’s offense or any new offense has been compared by quarterback coach Scott Turner to “Being dropped in Mexico without knowing the language. You know what a banana is, but you have no idea what do call it.”
He learned the system with help from a virtual reality program known as STRIVR, and watched hours of film. This type of training program and the improvements in VR content created for them over the past few years is amazing, but it also comes down to dedication. Bradford spent 14 hours a day either at the facility or looking at film and studying at home.
Physical Concerns
The 30-year-old quarterback has the brains, but what about his history of injuries? It’s unfortunate, but what does it say about his physical toughness? He missed the entire 2014 season after a knee injury midway through 2013, which he re-injured in pre-season.
He’s had concussions before. When playing for the Eagles (November 2015) against the Dolphins, he got the third of his career. He was evaluated once this season after a serious hit by the Lions Kerry Hyder on November sixth. Whether new equipment or new rules will prevent more concussions going forward, it’s still a concern for a quarterback who played this season with a fairly porous offensive line.
The Bottom Line
Teddy Bridgewater is a question mark at best, and whether his knee will ever let him be the quarterback he was before the injury is uncertain. Sam Bradford might turn into a gamble. This year, his numbers were better than mediocre at least, and he might improve with a healthy offensive line.
Still, over time as other teams watch him and learn his weaknesses, there is no telling if Sam Bradford will revert to the Bradford we know: low yards per attempt and a subpar QBR. Even if the defense can continue to win games, is this who we want as the leader of our team?
I don’t know. The Vikings have a history of quarterbacks who went on to be good somewhere else, faded into obscurity, or were on the verge of retirement and gave us the one last okay season they had left in their arm (sorry, Brett. Just telling it like it is).
Sam Bradford won’t speculate on his future, even in 2017. Neither will Zimmer, although he does drop hints, but says team evaluations will officially begin in March. Until then, us Vikings fans will just have to watch other teams in the playoffs while we do the speculating for them.
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