The Philadelphia Eagles are never boring. But it’s been a reversal of attitude in the City of Brotherly Love by a veteran signal-caller that has opened a few eyes.
On April 20, just one week prior to the 2016 NFL draft, the Philadelphia Eagles traded up to acquire the number-two overall pick. It was clear that the front office was looking to lock down rookie quarterback Jared Goff or Carson Wentz.
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Fast forward one week. The Eagles selected Wentz with the second pick and incumbent signal-caller Sam Bradford requested to be released from his contract. This is the same contract Bradford had just signed a two-year $36-million extension on in March (via Matt Lombardo of NJ.com).
The Eagles’ front office wasn’t having one bit of Bradford’s nonsense, and the 28-year-old quarterback immediately recommitted himself not just to the Eagles organization, but to his teammates as well.
When asked what made him change his mind, Bradford stated his reasoning in a press conference (courtesy of the team’s website), “I think it’s one of those things that after time and after thought, I realized that this is still the best place for me to be. There are a lot of guys in that locker room that I really care about and I know they care about me.
“I think some of the conversations that I had with some of those guys in the two weeks I was away just made me realize how much I miss being around them and how much I miss being on the field with those guys. Knowing that they have my back and knowing how much support they had for me made me realize that this is still the right place for me to be.”
It’s been three months since the Bradford drama went down in Philly, and the club’s coaching staff has made it abundantly clear Bradford is their starter. Now, he has to keep the starting job. Offensive coordinator Frank Reich has been impressed with Bradford, namely his timing and accuracy. When asked what has impressed Reich the most about Bradford, the coach had plenty to say on Monday:
"His accuracy, timing. I think one of Sam’s strengths — he’s got many — but he keeps it really simple. It’s not because he has to, it’s because that’s the best way to play football. You want to have a sophisticated understanding of everything, but yet still keep it simple, and that’s really what we try to teach and ingrain in the guys. When you teach a system and when you teach all the options that are available, you tell a quarterback, ‘Here are all the options; here’s the progression; here’s all the protection checks.’ But his job is to keep it simple, to see the coverage, but yet to narrow it down in his progression, because at the end of the day, it’s about match-ups. It’s about finding little windows. And I think he has a very instinctive and natural way of doing that, and then he’s accurate with the ball."
Bradford’s strength is in his simplicity and sticking to the fundamentals of his game. Reich calls Bradford “instinctive” and in the coming season with a stacked amount of competition in the NFC East, he’s going to need every ounce of natural “instinct” at his disposal.
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Bradford, new head coach Doug Pederson and the Birds play their first game at home against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Thursday evening, August 11. We should get a pretty good gauge from the always-opinionated local fans if they approve of their veteran quarterback.