Sielski: If not Bradford, who?

If not Sam Bradford, who?

That question will define the Eagles' offseason, and if your answer is "Someone else," your Someone Else had better be something else. If you're going to argue that the Eagles would be better off next season without Bradford as their starting quarterback, then your proposed solution ought to be logical and realistic and actually capable of improving the team. If you're going to argue that Bradford will be too expensive to retain, that it's too risky to commit to him because of his injury history, or that the Eagles will never compete for a Super Bowl with him anyway because he just isn't "elite" and doesn't have that intangible and indescribable thing that Super Bowl quarterbacks seem to have, then you had better don your Super-Duper-Super-Bowl-Quarterback-Spotting Night Vision goggles, find Bradford's successor, and figure out how the Eagles can acquire him.

The truth is, the Eagles probably could use your help in carrying out all that legwork, because they've done precious little of it themselves.

This is not to suggest that the Eagles - i.e. player-personnel czar Howie Roseman, head coach Doug Pederson, and the team's scouts - aren't at this moment evaluating pro and college quarterbacks and weighing their options with Bradford. This is to suggest, however, that over time the Eagles have put themselves in a position in which they pretty much have to do everything they can to keep Bradford: franchise-tag him, sign him to a multiyear extension, do the former and then the latter, whatever. It's not that they don't have a choice. It's that none of their possible alternatives to Bradford are all that appealing, and a big reason that they don't have a more appealing alternative is that, since selecting Donovan McNabb with the No. 2 overall pick in the 1999 draft, they have failed to follow a smart strategy for maintaining success and replenishing talent. They haven't drafted enough quarterbacks.

Consider, as a jumping-off point, a comment that Pederson made on Comcast SportsNet earlier this week. After noting that, in his mind, the Eagles already had some pieces in place for a quick turnaround from their 7-9 record last season - Lane Johnson, Zach Ertz, etc. - Pederson said this:

"And then you start just kind of filling in: a hole here, a hole there, get some depth here, you know, get you a young quarterback possibly. And then you just start developing your talent, and you see what happens after that."

Five words buried in that quote - "get you a young quarterback" - might set off alarm bells for those who believe, or want to believe, that the Eagles will say goodbye to Bradford and cast their lot with whatever quarterback they have targeted in this year's draft. It's a natural conclusion to draw because people tend to think of the position in zero-sum terms. That is, if a team believes it has a franchise quarterback, it should commit fully to that franchise quarterback, and any indication that the organization might be considering replacing him comes to be regarded as some kind of betrayal. Donovan, now that the Eagles have drafted Kevin Kolb, are you a sad panda? And why do you think Andy Reid hates you all of a sudden?

But because quarterbacks have such value, a team can never have too many of them. They become commodities that teams can develop for themselves or trade for additional players or draft picks. There was little chance, for instance, that Chip Kelly could have acquired Bradford from the St. Louis Rams without first helping Nick Foles unfurl that outlying 2013 season, when Foles threw 27 touchdowns and just two interceptions.

In perhaps the most prolonged and effective use of this strategy, Gil Brandt, the Dallas Cowboys' director of player personnel from 1960 through 1989, oversaw 29 drafts and selected a total of 25 quarterbacks. He took at least one in 19 drafts, including Roger Staubach in 1964 and Troy Aikman in 1989.

If not Sam Bradford, the Eagles quarterback could be ...
Mark Sanchez (for obvious reasons)
Chase Daniel (backed up Alex Smith in K.C.)
Paxton Lynch (The Eagles could theoretically draft him in the first round if Carson Wentz and Jared Goff are gone.)
Robert Griffin III (The chances aren't as great now that Chip Kelly is gone.)
Christian Hackenberg (He could be a second- or third-round pick.)

If the new quarterback is a placeholder, here are seven who, while achieving some success, gave way to starters who went on to greater notoriety:
Doug Pederson to Donovan McNabb (Eagles)
Don Majkowski to Brett Favre (Packers)
Steve DeBerg to Joe Montana (49ers)
Hugh Millen to Drew Bledsoe (Patriots)
Tommy Maddox to Ben Roethlisberger (Steelers)
Aaron Brooks to Drew Brees (Saints)
Jim Harbaugh to Peyton Manning (Colts)

"No matter what shape you're in, if you're good enough to get a quarterback who can help you, then I think miracles can happen," Brandt said in a 2012 interview. "There's a ray of hope for everybody if you've got a quarterback who can do things."

The Eagles have shut the blinds to those rays of hope for a long time. Since McNabb in 1999, they have selected just six quarterbacks over the subsequent 16 drafts, and Foles turned out to be the most accomplished of the bunch. By comparison, the New England Patriots drafted eight quarterbacks during that period, even though Tom Brady has been their starter since 2001, and the Green Bay Packers drafted seven, even though they made a relatively seamless transition from one Hall of Famer (Brett Favre) to another (Aaron Rodgers).

The point isn't that none of the Patriots' draftees supplanted Brady, or that only Rodgers was good enough to persuade the Packers to move on from Favre. It's that those teams gave themselves more chances to find another talented quarterback - and all the possibilities he would open - than the Eagles did. Now, at a time when the Eagles are talking about winning next season, Sam Bradford is their best option, maybe their only one. If not him, who?

msielski@phillynews.com

@MikeSielski