Jim Thomas seems a bit grumpy

PA Ram wrote:

Jim Thomas @jthom1 ·

Jim Thomas @jthom1 · 21m 21 minutes ago
Wonder how that plays in locker room in terms of credibility issue? Heard some Rams players not happy with how whole Bradford thing handled.

He REALLY just seems unhappy with this whole thing. I think he feels duped and doesn’t appreciate it.

Yeah, he seems to be taking something personally, there.

Bradford himself doesn’t seem to have a problem
with the way it was handled.

w
v

Winnbrad wrote:

Well Jim did get duped. The Snishers have been saying, forever, how much they love Bradford. Then this happens, with not even a hint dropped beforehand. Jim probably feels like he got played a little. I don’t know. He’s a pro, though, and he knows the NFL is full of misinformation, and disinformation. Everybody gets fooled, once in a while.

Regarding the trade, people can say whatever they want, but I still think Bradford would be on this team if he had taken a drastic pay cut, but with an incentive laden contract. Bradford and his agent didn’t want to do that. The Rams played the only hand they had left, trade him. That’s the teams only leverage, so they used it.

IMO, the Rams made a good trade. We’ll see how it plays out.

I always thought the paycut talk was utter nonsense.
For the life of me, i saw no reason in the world
why he would take a pay cut. It just seemed like fan-talk
to me. Now i could see him getting an “extension” with
lots of incentive clauses — but a “pay cut” — no way.
Why would he do that?

w
v

• This reply was modified 9 years, 2 months ago by wv.

Winnbrad wrote:

I know. We talked about it before. I agree with you. There’s no reason for Bradford to do anything. He knows his own injury risk, and he’s got $13 million guaranteed, coming his way, no matter what. Sure Brady, Manning, etc., have renegotiated contracts to spread out the cap hit, but Bradford was in his final year, and he hasn’t been involved in a regular season game in a year and a half.

I think money, the cap space, the draft picks, and the fact that the Rams got a starting QB in return, all caused the stars to align just right, and the Rams made the trade.

Smart move, imo.

This is my own Wild-Speculation. No evidence for it whatsoever,
but i wonder if Bradford’s “leadership style” just
didnt quite jive with Fisher. I dunno.

w
v

A few of us were talking about Thomas 2 or 3 weeks ago. I think he’s been souring on the Rams for a while. He can’t talk to Kroenke, and he’s not liking the stadium/LA/move stuff, and he posted the day before Bradford’s trade that he had a source he trusted inside the building tell him there was nothing going on with Foles.

He isn’t happy.

Zooey wrote:

A few of us were talking about Thomas 2 or 3 weeks ago. I think he’s been souring on the Rams for a while. He can’t talk to Kroenke, and he’s not liking the stadium/LA/move stuff, and he posted the day before Bradford’s trade that he had a source he trusted inside the building tell him there was nothing going on with Foles.

He isn’t happy.

Is this bigger than when equipment manager got fired?

PA Ram wrote:

Fisher said Bradford probably wouldn’t have been back even if he had agreed to paycut.

I think this is the source of Fisher’s frustration. If we take that statement as truth, then the Rams were basically selling a line of bull the whole time. And, it’s like they were really in Bradford’s camp the whole time. Which is odd, because why wouldn’t you just stay quiet and give out signals that you were shopping Bradford. Maybe you get more offers.

Or, the statement above is untrue.

Maybe JT’s just tired of the bull crap. I could see that.

• This reply was modified 9 years, 2 months ago by Dak.

Dak wrote:

I think this is the source of Fisher’s frustration. If we take that statement as truth, then the Rams were basically selling a line of bull the whole time. And, it’s like they were really in Bradford’s camp the whole time. Which is odd, because why wouldn’t you just stay quiet and give out signals that you were shopping Bradford. Maybe you get more offers.

Or, the statement above is untrue.

Maybe JT’s just tired of the bull crap. I could see that.

You assume NFL executives rely on ESPN for their information about who’s on the market. They all know that PR is a separate thing. I think we can safely bet that there were few, if any, teams surprised by Bradford’s trade.

wv wrote:

This is my own Wild-Speculation. No evidence for it whatsoever,
but i wonder if Bradford’s “leadership style” just
didnt quite jive with Fisher. I dunno.

w
v

Some insight there. I think that is possible.

Dak wrote:

OK, then why lie about it to the local beat reporters? I can see JT’s frustrations.

Because you don’t want rumors of Bradford’s trade being turned into a media circus. And the only way to control that is to control that. The moment it’s a shared secret, you cannot control how or where it is shared.

HighPlainsDrifter wrote:

I don’t think the notion of a “pay cut” on Bradford’s part was completely unreasonable.

It doesn’t matter how much he made. No one can name a single young starting qb in the history of the NFL who “took a paycut,” injured or not. It’s not done. Some older guys do it because they’ve made their money.

In fact not just qb. I can’t think of any young player who ever did that.

And besides, Fisher did say directly that the contract didn’t matter. It isn’t what decided things. He said directly that he still would have been traded if he had renegotiated, and that if the Rams did not get the offer they got, they would have lived with the contract.

On the other hand I agree with this:

HighPlainsDrifter wrote:

I’m disappointed and a bit sad that the Bradford era in St. Louis is over without the mutual success that I think we all hoped for and expected.

zn wrote:

And besides, Fisher did say directly that the contract didn’t matter.

That’s exactly my point in saying that the Rams were just seeking a more “normal” situation at QB. One that didn’t necessarily mean having a backup that represented a long term solution should Bradford go down again. And, for what it’s worth, I think roughly $65 million over four seasons might suggest that Bradford had “made his money”, and could’ve considered taking a bit less. I have read that Bradford, in fact, was willing to renegotiate. Don’t know the viability of that report, but there it is. I think the Rams just felt that it was time to move on from a very tenuous situation and the offer of Foles in making that a reality was just something that they couldn’t pass up.

from off the net

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FrankenRam

I don’t think it’s too hard to understand why JT might be a little miffed. As the local beat writer, I’m sure there have been more than a few times that he’s been told something by someone in the FO, be it Snead, Fisher, or Demoff, but was asked to keep it quiet for some period of time. And chances are he probably went along with their wishes rather than turning around and letting the cat of the bag in a column or chat.

IF that’s an accurate assessment, he probably feels he had demonstrated he could be trusted by the org to not be a blabbermouth about every little tidbit thrown his way. And then to be as totally shut out of the Bradford trade rumors as us fans, I think I’d be a little miffed also.

IMO, being a beat writer for any team in any sport is probably a bit of a PITA job these days. It’s their job to report what they know about the team, but yet they have to establish a relationship with the FO of that team, and the players, as well. And it would be difficult to build that relationship if you publicly disclosed every little tidbit that came out of someone’s mouth in the org.

Interestingly enough, it sounds like Chip Kelly contacted Bob Stoops and at least one other Oklahoma coach about Bradford in the time leading up to the trade. And ya KNOW that had to get back to at least Sam at some point. So, perhaps JT could have done a little more digging along those lines and put 2&2 together rather than (apparently) being so reliant on his ‘insider’ status. But still, I could see him being upset at being treated like a complete outsider.