Ford: QB supply creates Bradford demand
There is only one way to interpret quarterback Sam Bradford's reported demand to be traded by the Eagles, if the reports are indeed accurate. Here is that interpretation:
There is only one way to interpret quarterback Sam Bradford's reported demand to be traded by the Eagles, if the reports are indeed accurate. Here is that interpretation:
He wants to be traded.
This is a rare what-you-see in the dance between professional athletes and their employers. Usually, there is bluffing involved and posturing and chest-puffing and all manner of artifice from both sides. There are more lines drawn in the sand than at a beach volleyball tournament.
That isn't what Bradford is doing. He doesn't want to get a better deal here. He wants to leave, and is in an excellent position to force that to happen.
Since the new collective bargaining agreement in 2011, holdouts have generally taken place for only two reasons. Either a veteran player believes he has outperformed an existing contract or a younger player entering the option year of his rookie contract wants to avoid a franchise tag.
Bradford is in a different category, one just invented by Howie Roseman. He gave up free agency to sign a new contract with a team that pledged its troth only to find, seven weeks later, that troths ain't what they used to be.
Apparently unwilling to hang around for a year and get his head beaten in behind a still-shaky offensive line, Bradford says the Eagles, by trading up to the No. 2 pick in the draft last week, have now seen the last of him. That is the logical extension of threatening to stay away until he is traded.
Only one mandatory set of practices is scheduled before training camp, a June 7-9 minicamp that would incur a fine of approximately $76,000 if Bradford didn't show up. Remember that we're talking about a man who made $78 million in the NFL before this season and just banked an additional $11 million signing bonus from the Eagles. During training camp itself, which doesn't begin for three months, Bradford could be fined up to $30,000 per day, but no football organization would allow anything so divisive to get that far. The Eagles aren't going to let their draft decision and its ugly consequences rumble through the locker room for that long.
Here's what I think is going to be the result of Bradford's trade demand:
He's going to be traded.
What is worth pondering, however, regardless of what happens, is whether Roseman saw this standoff as a possibility, or whether he believed Bradford would good-soldier his way to being released after one year of his front-loaded, two-year contract. The latter would allow the Eagles to be in position to win this season with Bradford, and then keep winning with either Jared Goff or Carson Wentz next season.
If Roseman actually had that scenario in mind when Bradford was signed March 1, just one day after Goff and Wentz finished off a dazzling NFL scouting combine, well, those are some serious machinations. Had he already decided that, by whatever means necessary, the Eagles would turn the 13th pick in the draft into either No. 1 or No. 2? If so, then to also think the team could have everything - win now with Bradford, win later with the new kid - was a greedy miscalculation.
As it is, the Eagles have given up the following for the second pick in the first round Thursday: the 13th pick, Kiko Alonso, Byron Maxwell, a third-round pick, a fourth-round pick (which came in the DeMarco Murray trade), their 2017 first-round pick, and their 2018 second-round pick. Oh, and they got a fourth-round pick back.
They got out from under some unfavorable contracts in the trades, but they also lost potentially useful players. Now you can very possibly add Sam Bradford to that list and there won't be much coming back in return, plus an $11 million cap hit as a bonus.
If Goff or Wentz is That Guy, the end will justify the means. It had better, because should the Eagles be forced to give in to Bradford's threat, they have a good chance to stink this coming season and that 2017 first-round pick might turn out to be a lot more valuable than they figured.
It will be said that Bradford is being petulant and afraid to back up his prove-it-on-the-field bravado, and that the quarterback and his agent knew full well the new contract was actually a one-year deal in disguise.
There's some truth there, particularly regarding the contract, but Bradford has no history of stepping outside the lines before, or backing down from a fair fight. He's a straight-arrow, Midwestern boy, and he thinks he's been done dirty this time. Whatever he was told about his role and his future here didn't include the prospect of immediately dumping a truckload of team assets on the ground to land the hottest model from this year's runway.
The long shot that the Eagles would have a win-win and everyone would part happily couldn't have been the plan all along, right? More likely, the infatuation with getting one of those quarterbacks grew to the point that Bradford's feelings simply became collateral damage.
How much damage isn't clear yet, but it sure doesn't look as if parting happily is in the cards.
@bobfordsports