Withholding Judgment on Sam Bradford

Chase Stuart, who contributes to the Fifth Down, took some criticism from Rams fans in August for writing on Pro-Football-Reference.com that Sam Bradford’s rookie season in 2010 was overrated. Stuart’s point was that football pundits were overrating Bradford — he was being called a surefire star — not that Bradford was a failure.

Stuart wrote:

If you wanted the perfect storm of a formula that would spit out an overrated rookie quarterback, you would want to have a quarterback who:

Finished near the top of the league in attempts, overinflating his yards and touchdown metrics. Yards and touchdowns aren’t good ways to grade quarterbacks, but that doesn’t stop people from doing just that;
Played for a team with just a couple of wins in the prior year, so the quarterback would get credit for any regression to the mean in the form of a significant increase in wins;
Played a really weak schedule that boosted the quarterback’s individual stats and team wins; and
Played for a team whose defense got a lot better without adding any big names, so people can just think “what’s the difference between them this year and last year? That rookie QB and not much else.”

The problem when it comes to evaluating Bradford is that too many people are paying too much attention to the wrong stats. Bradford’s 2010 performance wasn’t very good, even for a rookie. Over the past 20 seasons, there have been 37 quarterbacks to throw at least 224 passes in their rookie season. According to the Net Yards per Attempt Index, which grades each quarterback by his average net yards per pass attempt adjusted for era, Bradford ranks just 22nd out of 37 quarterbacks. That puts him just behind Tony Banks and Trent Edwards, and right ahead of Joey Harrington and Matt Stafford. Bradford ranked 31st in NY/A last season, only topping Carolina’s Jimmy Clausen; he ranked just 29th in Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt. Does that scream superstar to you?

This season, Bradford is again 31st in net passing yards per attempt (4.8 yards), with the caveat that his supporting cast is once again subpar.

Stuart wrote in an e-mail on Tuesday:

Here are the three big factors for the 2010 and 2011 Rams:

2010:
Rams passing offense ranks 30th in Net yards per Attempt
Rams have a strength of schedule 4.2 points below average, 2nd easiest in the league
Rams rank 9th in points allowed

2011:

Rams passing offense ranks 31st in Net yards per Attempt
Rams have a SOS of 5.0 above average, 2nd hardest in the league
Rams rank 30th in PPG allowed

2010, Rams go 7-9
2011, Rams go 0-5, staring 0-7 (@Dal, NO) in the face

The only possible conclusion: Sam Bradford was awesome last year, but stinks this year.

In other words, Bradford got too much credit last season for the Rams’ improvement to 7-9 from 1-15, and he shouldn’t be assigned too much of the blame this year.

If anything, Bradford’s performance has been consistently mediocre in both seasons. That doesn’t mean he won’t become a star, just that he shouldn’t be called one until he has proved it. Stuart said Bradford’s 2010 season said “little about how the rest of his career will unfold” and concluded:

As the number one overall pick in the draft, Bradford has a bright future. But his rookie season was noteworthy for just one thing: he threw the ball a lot.