HEALTHY RESPECT
Bradford can sling with the best of them and will for Arizona — if he’s not hurt
There’s a joke around the NFL that Arizona Cardinals quarterback Sam Bradford should change his name to “When Healthy, Sam Bradford,” because that caveat seems to precede any mention of him.
When healthy, Sam Bradford is a darn good quarterback.
He showed that this summer, when he played in the second exhibition game against New Orleans, completing six of six passes to six receivers and orchestrated a 61-yard touchdown drive.
Bradford was similarly sharp for the Minnesota Vikings against the Saints in last season’s opener, throwing for 346 yards and three touchdowns on 27-of-32 passing in a 29-19 victory. That earned him a careerbest 143.0 passer rating and NFC Player of the Week honors.
Problem is, Bradford is seldom healthy. He was drafted No. 1 overall by the St. Louis Rams in 2010 despite coming off shoulder surgery that cut short his junior season at Oklahoma. In his second year in the NFL, he missed five games with a high ankle sprain. Two years later, his season ended in Week 7 with a torn left anterior cruciate ligament. The next year, another season-ending injury to the same ACL in the preseason. Last year he wasn’t healthy after Week 1 because of accumulated damage to that oft-repaired knee, and speculation circulated that it might be a career-ending situation. On and on ... Bradford has made a staggering $134 million in his career despite playing all 16 games only twice, in 2010 and 2012. He’s 34-45-1 in games he has started and has yet to make the Pro Bowl or start a postseason game.
For the Cardinals, anything they can get out of Bradford is icing. They have No. 10 pick Josh Rosen waiting in the wings, and the former UCLA star is the most polished and prepared of this year’s rookie quarterbacks to step in and perform. That said, Arizona would love to have him hold a clipboard for a while and learn behind a seasoned pro who can pick apart defenses … when healthy.
Bradford said this summer that his oft-repaired knee feels better than it has at any point since he suffered the injury last fall.
“I’ve gone through this a couple of times, unfortunately,” he said. “But I think there’s just a point in time where you stop thinking about it and you know that your knee is healthy and you’re capable of going out there and doing everything that it needs to be able to do.”
In Seattle, Russell Wilson is coming off a season in which he tied a career best with 34 touchdown passes but spent much of that time running for his life. The Seahawks had no ground game to help him, and Wilson wound up running for a club-best 586 yards. That’s 346 more than the team’s closest running back.
Wilson was the NFL’s first quarterback to lead his team in rushing since Randall Cunningham led Philadelphia 27 seasons earlier.
Rams quarterback Jared Goff is heading into his third season and is coming off a strong performance in the first year of coach Sean McVay’s offense. Receiver Sammy Watkins is gone, but the Rams now have Brandin Cooks to stretch the field.
In San Francisco, Jimmy Garoppolo already has achieved rock-star status. The 49ers quarterback, former backup to Tom Brady in New England, arrived via trade in the second half of last season and changed the outlook of the foundering franchise.
In their first 11 games, the 49ers averaged 17.0 points. With Garoppolo at the helm for the final five — all wins — they averaged 28.8 points. But in the finale against the Rams, for instance, Los Angeles already had clinched the division and was playing its reserves. So we’ll find out soon enough how real that turnaround was.