FanPost

ScapeGoat

Well another week and another lose for the Rams but instead of doing a Good, Bad, and Ugly I decided instead to address that uproar and outcry about Sam Bradford sucking and even some going as far as call him a bust. Will I completely be an apologist for him, hell no but will I add some sanity in the middle of all the ignorance that is spewing out on this site, yes. More after the jump...

Sam Bradford by all means did not play great tonight and in some eyes he's was down right horrible. He overthrew Lloyd on multiple occasions on down the field type throws, on some throws I questioned what the hell he was doing, and I counted 2 or 3 balls that could have been intercepted. Bradford was 23-of-36 passes for 255 yards and an interception so to say at least something good he didn't have that bad a completion % today.

Now before the season many thought this was going to be a break out year for Bradford remembering the great numbers that he put up last year in Shurmur's offense we forgot a few things in our time of off-season crowning of being the best team in the NFC West. 1. Last year Sam was the product of the dink and dunk. The system was predicated around getting the ball out of his hand as quick as possible to limit the hits that got put on him and even though most of the time we complained about it, it worked. This year is a complete opposite of that, he has to hold onto the ball for much longer and make reads. 2. He's also asked to make line protection calls. Some have said on here that the line protection calls should be taken away from him and I have to disagree. The reason is he's already deep into it and it wouldn't make much sense to take them away from him this late in the season. Might as well let him take his lumps and move on. 3. A shortened off-season that fucked over not only him but also McDaniel's plans to teach his offense to the guys and the offensive line's time to soak in the play book.4.Sam hasn't practiced with this offense for weeks.

Now some might be asking yourself ok this is all fine and dandy but why did Feely do as good as Sam is doing? Well that's easy, why Feely was brought in after Sam was injured he had his assignment, be conservative, hand off the ball to SJax and manage the game. Don't make too many mistakes and they'll be fine. Now I don't know what the hell McDaniels is doing with Sam but they need to get what they want to do with Bradford down and quick. It's like McDaniels isn't sure what he wants to do at times and it shows in his play-calling. They need to decide whether this is going to be a run first team or is this going to be the air it out type of a team. IMO this should be a run first type team for the rest of the season and put it on SJax's back. After the season is done with they need to decide how they want to build this team for the future, if Sam is truly going to be the leader of this team build it around him.

Now for the 2 words that people didn't want to hear before the season started and probably cringe at hearing now, Sophomore Slump. Yes Sam is hitting his Sophomore slump like it's a brick wall but it happens.So with that and all of the things I pointed out above, what did you expect? Did you expect for him to just come out furry of good (haha my bad that's Tebow) and light it up with little to no off-season. But then again I don't blame the people for being pissed, I blame us for buying into the hype and not looking at the Rams for what they were. This was a fucked up schedule and we overrated our Rams but then again who wouldn't have coming off a season that we had, barely missing the playoffs and all. So instead of looking at the season and this game for what it was we look at Sam and blame him as our ScapeGoat. Not the play-calling to go for it when we had a fully able FG kicker, not the special team for allowing the kick to be kicked, nor the special teams for allowing Peterson to run the kick back for the TD.

But I guess that's how it goes you live and die by the QB and when you don't win it's his fault and by all means I will admit he sucked today and hasn't performed up the the expectations that so many expected of him this year but I refuse to be sucked into the idiotic pleasure of saying he's a bust or that we should trade him and draft Luck. I still believe that he has a hell of a future in front of him he just needs the time to develop like QBs like Favre, Peyton, and Elway. Am I saying he'll be a legend, no but I am saying that he still has a hell of a lot of potential that he's been untapped and for anybody to give up on him or for the FO to give up on him would be completely and utterly dumb of this FO. I still have faith in this team and will not give up on the season until it's over.

As for the rest of the team the bright spot of this team and continues to be is the SJax and the Defense. I think people neglect to see that Spags is one hell of a DC and he gets these boys up and ready to play. I'd like to see what this team could be with an offense that could actually put some TDs on the board. Chris Long was pretty bottled up for the majority of the game but he showed but clutch at the end and I'd like to say kudos to Stewart, he as stepped up and been on of the few bright spots on this team.

Hope you enjoyed the read and hope that there's some maturity and calm headed people on here tomorrow that I can talk football with, peace..