Sam Bradford must be living right. This guy has to be the luckiest guy there is. On any normal year, under any normal circumstances he would not be where he now finds himself now. After his roller-coaster year and a half he's found himself with a 6 year, $78 million contract; with the important number of $50 million guaranteed. This all comes after he had an injury-plagued season in college last year, and of course, he hasn't taken an NFL snap yet.
Well, the $50 million is outrageous, and then consider that it is $8.3 more than Matthew Stafford got in 2009, and $20 mil more than Jake Long got in 2008 (both 1st overall picks). It is the biggest contract in NFL history!
How did this happen? After redshirting at Oklahoma he had a very good freshman year, and then exploded to have a great sophomore year and punctuated it with a Heisman Trophy. But then, after throwing 50 touchdown passes in the Big 12, Bradford was held in check against Florida in the National Championship Game. He didn't play bad, but he wasn't the world beater he was in the regular season. After this, he was expected to enter the NFL draft and be a top 10 pick, but he chose to come back to college to try and win a championship and gain more experience. So he left millions on the table to come back to college, something that could cost him huge if he gets injured in 2009.
Well, Bradford got injured in the first game against BYU; which Oklahoma lost. Then he recuperated over the next few weeks to play against Baylor and then Texas in a last chance effort to save OU's season and his. But he injured his throwing shoulder again in the 1st quarter to end his season.
So after leaving millions of dollars on the table it was looking like this was all a mistake. But fortunately for Bradford he ended up picking the best year of all to enter the draft. He was paired with Jimmy Clausen as the best quarterbacks in the draft, and quarterbacks are usually taken #1, or at least in the top 5 if you're the best in the draft. Tim Tebow and Colt McCoy were the closest to them but they were projected to to in the 2nd and 3rd round. Since Clausen is a cocky snot-nosed kid, the Rams chose Bradford.
With the escalating rookie contracts in the NFL Bradford was able to get $50 million guaranteed..the richest contract in the history of the NFL. If he would've come out after the '08 season he would've been behind Matthew Stafford so we would've probably received around $20 million guaranteed. But by waiting a year to come out with this poor quarterback class he was chosen first and got to take advantage of the escalating rookie contracts.
So Sam Bradford is pretty lucky on all these accounts, and even more so that he is probably going to be the last rookie to get one of these ridiculous contracts without ever playing. The NFL is probably going to fix this, and they should. They need to have a rookie pay scale like the NBA does. The problem for NFL players is their playing careers are about half a long as NBA players, if that. My suggestion is to give everyone 1-year contracts, which I will detail in a blog on Tuesday, August 10th.
JB
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