Eagles make it clear they want Bradford back

INDIANAPOLIS - The Eagles made it clear on Wednesday. Abundantly clear.

Extremely clear.

Any other kind of intensifying adverb you want to put in front of clear.

Their preference, their desire, is for Sam Bradford to quarterback the team next season. Sam, they am.

But not at any price to their salary cap, knocked a bit crooked by Chip Kelly's year of spending dangerously. They are looking into alternatives, in case Bradford leaves after free agency begins on March 9.

If Bradford does leave, they intimated, it's not going to be because he isn't valued.

Howie Roseman, the Eagles' executive vice president of football operations, and Doug Pederson, the new head coach, spoke to reporters late in the afternoon at the NFL Scouting Combine. As you might expect, much of the questioning concerned the most important position on the field.

What they said about Bradford wasn't dramatically different from what they'd said previously, but it was more extensive and explicit, with March 9 drawing ever nearer.

Roseman's take was a bit more qualified than Pederson's, Roseman being the guy who has to talk contract with agent Tom Condon - something Roseman indicated probably would occur here in Indianapolis.

Pederson didn't dance.

"All I know is, if Sam wants to be in Philadelphia, he'll be in Philadelphia," Pederson said after a series of Bradford-related questions.

Earlier, Pederson said: "What he's done in the last half of last year has given him that opportunity to stay in Philadelphia. Listen, being a player in his shoes, you have to WANT to be somewhere. And I think Sam wants to be in Philadelphia . . . The fact that he himself put himself in a leadership role toward the end of the season proves to me that he can handle going forward in this role and the opportunity to start."

Pederson said his feeling that Bradford wants to come back to the Eagles stems from their phone conversations, "him talking like he wants to be there."

"I think it's important to him. And why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you want to come back to Philadelphia? (After) the success he had at the end of the year.

"We've expressed (to him) that we want him back. But free agency can do funny things to a lot of people. So that's where we're at right now."

The Eagles could have franchise-tagged Bradford for about $20 million a year, and still could, until March 1. They could transition tag him for a little less than that. But they aren't expected to do either; it would seem they think the Bradford market should end up well south of that figure. Roseman said the Eagles' cap situation is "tighter than it's been" during his 17 years with the team.

Roseman, asked about the status of talks, said: "It's never productive to talk about an ongoing negotiation, but we've been pretty clear we'd like to have Sam back. Along those lines, one of the great things about the combine is you get everyone together in one place. When you have pending free agency, you want to talk to those agents face-to-face and eye-to-eye . . . We'll meet with a lot of people. Tom (Condon), CAA, they've got a lot of players. We'll be running into Tom Condon at some point in the next couple of days."

Roseman said that given the amounts of cap room some teams have, it's hard to be certain another team won't value an asset at a higher price than you find comfortable.

"In everything you do, you have to have a backup plan, especially when you're talking about free agency. There's more money than there has been in the league the last couple of years. You can't just say, 'Hey, I'm going to go out in free agency and sign this particular player,' because you're competing with 31 other teams, so you have to have backup plans and contingency plans," said Roseman, who returned to personnel control when ex-coach Kelly was fired two months ago. "But our hope is that - we're looking at a lot of different options at a lot of different positions - but we're getting Plan A in all of those."

Asked if there might be an advantage in letting Bradford get to free agency and gauge the market, Roseman said it would be more helpful to know going into the free-agent period whether you had a deal.

The Eagles traded quarterback Nick Foles and their 2016 second-round draft pick, 43rd overall, to the Rams for Bradford last March. Bradford, coming off back-to-back ACL tears, got off to a slow start but finished strong.

In evaluating contingencies, Roseman noted that right now, Mark Sanchez and McLeod Bethel-Thompson are the only quarterbacks the Eagles have under contract past March 9, so, "If you guys hear about a name, it's probably true. We're probably exploring everything we can."

Pederson, by the way, referred to Sanchez as "another veteran guy that you'd love to have at the backup quarterback position." So the coach doesn't seem to see Sanchez as a starter, should Bradford leave.

There seems to be a decent chance that the Rams, who have tons of cap room, will take the $8 million cap hit entailed in releasing Foles, unseated as their starter by Case Keenum. Pederson, the Eagles' QB coach when the team drafted Foles in 2012, might be interested in getting him back, either as a backup or as a contingency starter.

Pederson said that the Eagles' interviews with potential QB draftees this week will have no bearing on the Bradford situation, which would seem to mean he doesn't envision drafting a rookie who would start in 2016.

bowenl@phillynews.com

@LesBowen

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