Sam Bradford Will Be Rams’ Starting QB, But Team Won’t Commit
Added on Sep 03, 2010 by Jason Kearney in
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The St. Louis Rams are facing a classic NFL dilemma–do they play rookie quarterback and future of the franchise Sam Bradford immediately or do they let him ‘understudy’ for awhile and start veteran A.J. Feeley? For the preseason at least, a sprained thumb on Feeley’s throwing hand took care of that decision. At the time of the injury the working plan was that Feeley would be the starter once he got healthy, but Bradford has visibly improved with each passing week after a rough start. Although the Rams have stated that they’ll mull it over and make a decision on Monday, every indication is that Bradford will get the starting gig.
On Friday, Rams’ coach Steve Spagnuolo gave this verbose ‘no comment’ when asked about the quarterback situation:
“Right now, there won’t be any in-depth starting 22 announcements until we get through these final evaluations. I realize the quarterback position is high profile, I respect that.”
Feeley is scheduled to return to practice on Monday, but the Rams’ staff isn’t sure if he’s ready to start taking direct snaps. Or maybe he is, and that’s just a mealy mouthed way of making the decision to elevated Bradford to the starting position without actually coming out and saying that’s what they’re doing. In any case, based on his preseason performance Bradford looks up to the challenge. He didn’t look very sharp in his first taste of preseason action–not surprising considering he missed his entire senior season at Oklahoma with an injury and hadn’t played competitive football in over a year. That all changed when Feeley was lost to injury and Bradford started looking like an NFL starting quarterback almost immediately.
More importantly, perhaps, the entire team has responded to Bradford at the controls and started to play better. After a horrible starting effort against Minnesota the Rams have won three straight to finish the preseason at 3-1. In the two games he started, Bradford was 21 for 28 for 257 yards with three touchdowns and no interceptions. Despite a convincing case that he should get the starting QB job, he’s not making a hard sell lobbying effort:
“If he says that, then I’ll handle it like I know I can. But until then, I’m just going to show up, do what I can and hopefully one day I will be the starter of this team.”
While Bradford is smart to play it low key, its hard not to notice that he’s made a positive impact on team chemistry already–the result is a general sense of enthusiasm from a team that finished 1-15 a year ago. Guard Adam Goldberg is ready to go:
“We’re excited how we’re jelling and come together. We’ve been able to execute and come out hot.”
As is middle linebacker James Laurinaitis. Laurinaitis is the son of pro wrestling superstar Joe Laurinaitis better known as Road Warrior Animal and 1/2 of arguably the most influential tag team in pro wrestling, the Road Warriors. This fact has nothing to do with this story, of course, but how badass is that to have Road Warrior Animal as your dad?:
“After that Minnesota game, we felt like we needed to turn things around fast. I think against Cleveland and New England and now Baltimore, we were able to come out and get something accomplished.”
Bradford should and will be the starter when the regular season begins for the Rams at home against Arizona next Sunday. With obvious improvement every time he takes the field, some already impressive skills and an apparent positive impact on team chemistry–not to mention the fact that Feeley’s throwing hand still isn’t 100%–if he’s not the starter Rams’ management should publicly question the sanity of their coaching staff. At this point, it looks like the team is just trying to figure out the best spin to put on the ‘Bradford as starter’ decision. Their belief that spin is necessary is curious–Bradford already has more credibility as a starting QB in the NFL than many veterans.
UPDATE: The Rams have since ‘done the right thing’ and named Bradford the official starting QB.
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