Sam Bradford a lock for NFL’s Offensive Rookie of the Year
Sam Bradford may be a shoe-in for the NFL’s Rookie of the Year Award already. It’s rare that a team names a rookie quarterback as their starter, and it’s even rarer that a rookie quarterback wins games in the NFL. It’s a tougher, quicker game than in the
college football ranks and most quarterbacks need time to adjust.
The Dallas Cowboys named Hall of Famer Troy Aikman the team’s starter when he was a rookie in 1989. The team finished that season with a 1-15 record, and Aikman, who started 11 games that season, was on the sidelines with a broken wrist for the team’s only
win.
Bradford is 4-5 as a rookie quarterback with the St. Louis Rams, and while he hasn’t put up Hall of Fame numbers just yet, he has done surprisingly well with a team that was barely expected to win four games all season.
After nine games, he has a quarterback rating of 78.2; that’s good enough for 27th in the league. He also has 1925 yards, a completion percentage of 71.4, 12 touchdowns and eight interceptions.
Those numbers aren’t fantastic, and there are some rookie quarterbacks that have put up greater numbers in their rookies seasons. Matt Ryan is the most recent to come to mind, he won the 2008 Rookie of the Year with a quarterback rating of 87.8 in 2008,
and Ben Roethlisberger won it in 2004 with a rating of 98.1.
Some others have won the award with worse statistics than Bradford has right now too. Vince Young won Rookie of the Year in 2006 with a passer rating of 66.7.
Bradford has also steadily gotten better as the season progresses. In Week 1, his first NFL game, he threw three interceptions and had a rating of 53.1. Other than one setback, a 44-6 blow-out loss to the Detroit Lions in week 5, he’s generally gotten better
each week.
He had a rating of 46.1 in that loss to the Lions, but when a team is down by such a large number of points, the offence has to adjust to try and cut the lead. An offence looking to score quick points can sometimes work a comeback, but often it leads to
terrible quarterback statistics.
On 31 October, Bradford had a rating of 112.4 in a 20-10 win against the Carolina Panthers, and he followed that game up with 251 yards and a touchdown pass in a close 20-23 loss. Bradford took the field in that game, trailing 20-17 with 2:10 to go in the
fourth quarter.
“Before he started I whacked him in the butt and I said, 'This is your time, go ahead,'” Rams coach Steve Spagnuolo said. "He doesn't even flinch, he just goes.”
Bradford completed seven of nine passes on the drive to set up a game-tying field goal from the 33-yard line.
“I can't really remember even one game where we had to put a drive together in the fourth quarter to come back and take a lead,” Bradford said, referring to his college football days.
He did a pretty good job in his first attempt at it in the NFL. It didn’t turn into a win for Bradford with the 49ers kicking a field goal in overtime to win the game, but it could next time.
Bradford’s improvement can be demonstrated in his touchdown-to-interception ratio alone. In the first five games of the season he threw six touchdowns and eight interceptions. In his past four games he’s thrown six touchdowns and zero interceptions.
If there was a rookie running back on pace for anywhere close to a 1000 rushing yards, Bradford might have some competition for NFL’s Offensive Rookie if the Year Award, but there’s not. Adrian Peterson was the last running back to win the award. That was
in 2007 and he had 1341 rushing yards that season.
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