Bradford must come to grips with Eagles role

I'VE BEEN PORING over the Eagles stories from early March, trying to find the place where Howie Roseman and Doug Pederson promised Sam Bradford he would be their quarterback forever, after signing him to a two-year, $35 million contract that everyone pointed out could really be a one-year contract, if 2016 didn't go well.

Still haven't found those quotes. In fact, I'm pretty sure all of us who cover the team noted prominently that the structure and term of the deal in no way precluded the Eagles from drafting a franchise QB this coming Thursday. Maybe back then we didn't foresee the tradeup, but in early March, it seemed quite possible the Eagles could get a QB from the eighth spot.

Athletes and coaches often brag to us about how they don't pay any attention to what we write. If that's what Bradford did in this case, it's too bad, because he really could have saved himself from a nasty surprise last week, when the Birds moved up for the second overall selection, apparently with the intention of drafting North Dakota State quarterback Carson Wentz.

Reporters have had no access to Bradford since the tradeup. We talked to him last Tuesday, the day before it happened, with rumors of such a move swirling, and his response was that he wasn't going to worry about what he couldn't control.

Since then, there have been two reports about a Bradford reaction. The first, from ESPN's Adam Schefter, alleged that Bradford was "hot," but also said "he's mad and wants to show everyone who's best." That might be a reaction you'd want, the incumbent vowing to show the Eagles he deserves to keep the job, ala Brett Favre when the Packers drafted Aaron Rodgers - an analogy center Jason Kelce employed Wednesday morning when I asked him about the possibility of Wentz being added to the QB room, a few hours before the trade.

The next report, from Bleacher Report's Jason Cole, was much more ominous. Cole said Bradford is "likely" to ask for a trade "so that he can move on with his career somewhere else with a team that's going to be invested in him long-term."

Monday marks five days since the deal. The Schefter take and the Cole take have gotten widespread play across the media landscape. Yet Bradford hasn't felt the need to say anything, and his agent, Tom Condon, hasn't returned texts. The bottom line is, if Bradford's reaction had been misreported, we'd know it by now.

We're left to conclude that Bradford really must want out, even though Roseman made it clear Wednesday that (A) Bradford is the starting quarterback, and (B) Roseman isn't interested in trading him (and incurring $11 million in dead cap costs over the next two seasons).

If I'm the Eagles, I try to smooth this over the best I can, convince Bradford that he has a chance here to guide the team to the playoffs, and we'll see what happens after that. Sure, there's very little chance he'll end up with a long-term commitment from a team that will have just drafted a QB second overall. But he didn't have a long-term commitment anyway.

In fact, if there had been a team out there willing to make a long-term commitment to Bradford, Condon would have figured that out and guided his client into free agency, instead of signing him here again. Condon is one of the top agents in the biz, especially when it comes to quarterbacks. He knew the market. He and his client proceeded accordingly.

Bradford will make $18 million this season to quarterback the Eagles. That's an awful lot of money. Yes, after every interception, the sideline TV cameras will focus on Wentz, holding the clipboard. But nobody in charge thinks Wentz, with only 23 college starts under his belt, is going to be ready to play this season. Fans? Sure. But they don't run the team. Do your job, win more than you lose, stay healthy, and somebody in this quarterback-desperate league will welcome you with open arms next offseason.

Some fans think the Eagles should continue to re-create 1999 by getting rid of Bradford and having Chase Daniel, the 30-year-old backup with three NFL starts, quarterback the team until Wentz is ready. But the 2016 Eagles aren't coming off back-to-back losing seasons as they were in '99; they weren't 3-13 last season. Roseman and Pederson want a competitive team now. Veterans such as Jason Peters, Malcolm Jenkins and Connor Barwin are hardly looking to waste a year of their precious careers.

I don't know if I would have done the deal or not. I liked the way Bradford finished 2015. Yes, Roseman is right, the percentages say you're more likely to win with a no-doubt blue-chip, top-of-the-league guy. The few remaining Bradford-to-the-bitter-end fans would like to point out that six years ago, Bradford was that blue-chip guy, the first player chosen in the 2010 draft. Injuries and Rams management incompetence derailed his career. He might have taken a strong step toward getting it back on track late last season.

But in advocating for Bradford in the past, before this opportunity arose, I always acknowledged there were two sides to his ledger, that the end of 2015 was more of a hint than a promise. When NFL Network lead draft analyst Mike Mayock answered questions on a conference call Friday, I asked him if Wentz was a better prospect than Bradford was, coming out of Oklahoma with a Heisman Trophy under his arm.

"When Bradford came out, there was a similar buzz," Mayock said. "Coming out of Oklahoma, great Pro Day, blah, blah, blah, one of the more accurate college quarterbacks I've seen. The issue was then and still now, very slight frame and injury prone. That was kind of the caveat that came with all the glowing reports. Six years later, that's still been his Achilles' heel, because when he's healthy for long periods of time, he can get pretty good. He still has a good arm. He still throws the ball with accuracy.

"So I look at Carson Wentz, and I see a big, thick, athletic kid with an elite arm, all the intelligence in the world. If you're going to ask me for one negative, I would say, because he only has 23 starts . . . that's less than half as many throws as Jared Goff . . . He needs to get the football. He needs to process information more quickly, and he needs to get the ball out more quickly. But that's part of the normal developmental pattern of just about any college quarterback, and I think he has the intelligence and work ethic to get that done. So if you ask me today who I'm more excited about as a first-round quarterback, it would be Carson Wentz over Bradford from back in the day."

Roseman was absolutely right last week when he pointed out that having a top 10 pick, which makes it feasible to move up to first or second to draft a top QB, isn't something that happens very often for the Eagles. And that there isn't always a great QB prospect to get, or, more often, the teams at the top want the QB and aren't trading out. This was the case a year ago with Tennessee and Marcus Mariota.

Roseman said last week that the no-doubt franchise QB is the most crucial ingredient, and he wants to take every shot he can to make sure he has that. Hard to argue.

I think Bradford needs to understand all this, and come to grips with the fact that he's not leaving this year. It's not the best hand, but it's a better one than fate ever dealt him in St. Louis.

@LesBowen

Blog: philly.com/Eaglesblog