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St. Louis Rams: 5 Undrafted Rookies with Best Chances to Make the Roster
by Patrick Karraker
This doesn;t say anything.
Sometimes I don’t read em till I post em.
if Williams can push himself ahead of at least five of those players, he’ll have a decent shot at ending up with a practice squad position.
he could create a roster spot for himself much like Roberson, an undrafted player who was once seen as a potential first-rounder, did a year ago.
But if he shows enough ability as a blocker to open holes for the Rams’ runners, he could become a useful weapon in the Rams’ offense
Yes and what is it about these particular players that makes them worthy of all this if/could speculation as opposed to the other UDFAs?
If player X does well, he could make it.
Why player X? As opposed to player Y? Well because if Player X does well, he could get some serious consideration. That’s why.
Why Sam Bradford Can Excel in Chip Kelly’s Offense
By Cian Fahey ,
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2392065-why-sam-bradford-can-excel-in-chip-kellys-offense
Quarterback-for-quarterback trades in the NFL are very rare. Trades that involve starting quarterbacks are even less common. Unsurprisingly, Chip Kelly isn’t scared of blazing a trail.
Now with personnel control of the Philadelphia Eagles, Kelly acquired former first overall draft pick Sam Bradford from the St. Louis Rams for Nick Foles, per ESPN’s Adam Schefter. Foles entered the 2014 season as the Eagles’ starting quarterback, but the offer of Bradford and a “swap of picks,” per NFL.com’s Albert Breer, proved to be too much.
A huge amount of speculation has surrounded Kelly and his quarterback position this offseason. Most of that has been focused on Marcus Mariota, the Oregon prospect who is expected to go in the top 10 of the upcoming draft.
It’s still possible that Kelly is chasing after his former college quarterback. Bradford and the second-round pick reported by ESPN.com’s Phil Sheridan could simply be added to the team’s arsenal of assets for a potential trade up into the top five with the Tennessee Titans, Jacksonville Jaguars, Oakland Raiders or Washington.
While that’s still a possibility, Bradford could also be the quarterback whom Kelly intends to start in 2015.
As this article discusses in depth, Bradford’s situation in St. Louis has dramatically hurt his statistical production. The 27-year-old missed a lot of time on the field through injury, including two torn ACLs over the past two seasons, but when he was on the field, he didn’t have a consistent running game or pass protection while his receivers struggled to get open and catch the ball.
Furthermore, Bradford was playing in Brian Schottenheimer’s offense. Schottenheimer is widely disdained for his lack of creativity and overall ability as a coordinator.
It’s blatantly obvious that Bradford will get better support if he stays in Philadelphia. Even though the Eagles lost Frank Gore, as the Colts announced his acquisition Tuesday, traded LeSean McCoy and couldn’t re-sign Jeremy Maclin, they still have Kelly’s scheme and enough talent to be more than just an average unit with good quarterback play.
Good quarterback play is what Bradford can give the Eagles offense. In a vacuum, Bradford has always been a good NFL quarterback. It’s not widely accepted because to come to this conclusion, you need to be able to isolate his performances from the offense in which he has played.
Bradford’s greatest strength is his accuracy.
The above chart tracks Bradford’s accurate and inaccurate passes from the 2013 season. He missed all of the 2014 season after tearing his ACL during the preseason, so this was the last time that he was on the field during the regular season.
It’s clear that Bradford is an exceptionally accurate passer when throwing the ball fewer than 10 yards downfield. His deep accuracy looks worse because the ratio of accurate-to-inaccurate throws broadens, but that is to be expected when throwing the ball farther downfield.
To get an idea of how impressive Bradford’s accuracy is overall, we must compare his chart to that of other quarterbacks. For an Eagles perspective, the best quarterback to compare him to is Foles.
As this chart highlights, a vast number of Foles’ targets during the 2013 season were behind the line of scrimmage. That year was Foles’ best with Philadelphia. Foles’ accuracy on these throws was mostly effective, but that should be expected of quarterbacks at this level.
His flaws became more apparent when he was asked to push the ball deeper downfield.
Foles was at his best throwing to intermediate routes directed toward the sideline. He was able to consistently give his receivers opportunities to catch the ball in those areas. However, his shorter accuracy often strained receivers unnecessarily, and his deep accuracy was simply bad.
In Kelly’s offense, Foles was regularly throwing deep passes into sizable windows. This helped his raw accuracy statistics, as he was able to simply float the ball downfield for his open receivers to run underneath.
Bradford didn’t have that advantage in St. Louis. Instead, he had the opposite.
Therefore, Bradford’s ability to throw the deep ball should be considered much more advanced than that of Foles. More specifically, Bradford’s ability to throw the deep ball should go a long way toward helping Kelly maximize the potential of his offense as a whole.
On this play against the Jacksonville Jaguars in 2013, Bradford shows off his impressive arm talent:
As they have so often done under Gus Bradley, the Jaguars come out showing a Cover 3 look before the snap. Bradford is under center with an offset fullback and one receiver outside of the numbers to each side of the field.
The receiver to his right, Austin Pettis, is whom Bradford is going to throw the ball to.
Pettis was initially lined up to the wide side of the field. His positioning against the Cover 3 that the defense was hinting at and his route that would take him down the sideline meant that he was always going to be Bradford’s best option on this play.
After carrying out the play fake and holding the deep safety to the near side of the field with his eyes, Bradford begins his throwing motion.
At this point, Pettis has created no separation against the defensive back. He is not even level with the defender as he accelerates into his route. Pettis is primarily a possession receiver who lacks size and doesn’t have long speed to be an adequate deep threat in this situation.
Therefore, Bradford must throw him open.
With exceptional arm strength and the perfect trajectory and placement, Bradford is able to lead Pettis to space behind the defensive back. Bradford puts the ball outside, away from the defensive back in a spot where only his wide receiver can catch the ball.
Covering that much ground through the air could lead you to think that he was simply lucky with the positioning of the ball, but that doesn’t jibe with the rest of Bradford’s tape.
He was consistently able to throw his receivers open in St. Louis, but those receivers weren’t consistently able to take advantage of the opportunities he provided. That kind of accuracy is what Kelly’s offense has been lacking with Michael Vick, Foles and Mark Sanchez in recent years.
With the accuracy in place, Bradford also needs to demonstrate his intelligence in terms of reading defenses consistently and making the types of plays that Kelly asks his quarterback to make.
During his time with the Rams, Bradford defaulted to caution. He typically appeared to be too cautious on the broadcast game tape, but the All-22 often revealed that he was being cautious because he had no options downfield. Being cautious was usually the smarter alternative.
He is a pocket passer with decent athleticism. That athleticism may be diminished now after two ACL tears, but it’s not the foundation of his success.
Back in Week 1 of the 2013 season, Rams tight end Jared Cook and rookie Arizona Cardinals safety Tyrann Mathieu combined for one of the more memorable plays of the year. Mathieu caught Cook from behind to punch the ball away as he was running into the end zone.
That was notable because of what Mathieu and Cook did, but Bradford made it happen by executing a very Kelly-like play.
From the shotgun, Bradford carries out a play fake with the running back who initially lined up to his right. This wasn’t the full extent of the play fake, though, as the Rams also pulled the right guard across the formation to sell the run as much as possible.
On the back end, the coverage has been left with man assignments underneath and one deep safety to the left of the offense.
Because the play fake was so effective, the Cardinals had two linebackers caught in no-man’s land underneath. As they attempted to recover their positions, Bradford was sitting deep in a completely clean pocket, watching the deep safety down the seam.
Bradford has to hold on to the ball to allow his routes to develop before making his decision based on what the deep safety does.
At the perfect time, Bradford decides to throw the ball to his closer seam route, which Cook is running. Cook squeezes in behind the defender covering him, but he hasn’t created significant separation downfield.
Bradford could attempt to float the ball down the field for him to run underneath, but there are defenders in position to come across and disrupt his tight end at the catch point if he does. Instead, he is able to alter the trajectory of his pass to fit it around the cornerback and hit Cook in stride.
Cook doesn’t have to slow down at any point, and the cornerback never has a chance to prevent the completion. This was a perfect play from the quarterback.
In recent times, Kelly has used similar principles to these in order to attack the defense deep down the field. The design and overall quality of his offense has often led to wide-open receivers, though, so even this play is more difficult than the average one Bradford would need to make in the Eagles offense.
The Rams didn’t trade Bradford to the Eagles because he doesn’t have the potential to be a very good player. They traded him because of his injury history and salary.
Bradford is a significantly better player than Foles despite the Rams’ willingness to jettison him.
from The NFL Statistical Crystal Ball: What 2014’s Numbers Can Tell Us About 2015
Defensive Touchdowns Allowed
Let’s run one more stat out there. There’s no year-to-year relationship when examining the number of points a team allows on safeties and fumble and interception returns. Even teams that throw a lot of picks or fumble away a lot of footballs manage to stumble into a tackle or have defenders fall over to even things out.
Take last year’s leader in points allowed, the Bears, who started Jay Cutler for 15 games and lived to tell the tale. Even as the combination of Cutler and Josh McCown enjoyed a dynamite season in 2013, Marc Trestman’s bunch allowed a staggering 44 points directly on turnovers. The Bears actually turned the ball over more frequently in 2014 (29 giveaways to 23), but even with Cutler sacrificing footballs to the opposition on a team that had given up on its coach by December, Chicago only allowed two defensive scores for a total of 12 points in 2014.
Yes, 44 points is a lot, but somehow, there’s one team that managed to go even higher in 2014. Who propped fantasy football defenses up last year?
Oh my. That’s eight defensive touchdowns allowed by the Rams, which doesn’t even include the 99-yard kick return they allowed to Knile Davis. Want to give your team a frustrating, unfair stat with no possible route to improvement besides variance, Jeff Fisher? The Rams were 0-8 in the games where they gave up a return touchdown last year (including that Chiefs game) and 6-2 in the ones where they didn’t cough up a TD. That stat isn’t super meaningful — any record is going to look worse when you put a team down by at least one touchdown as part of the split — but it’s instructive in thinking about just how self-destructive St. Louis was last season.
Elsewhere, three teams managed to make it through the entire season without allowing any points on offense!2 Nary a single team managed to do that in 2013. The Chiefs win the consistency award, with their hyper-conservative offense having allowed only a single safety to opposing defenses in both 2013 and 2014. They technically allowed a fumble return for a touchdown during the 2013 playoffs, but of course, that was by Andrew Luck.
NFL begins work on setting relocation fee
By Jim Thomas
In another indication of the growing momentum to have an NFL team in Los Angeles, the league has begun the process of establishing a relocation fee for the team — or teams — that might move to LA for the 2016 season.
“We’ve engaged an outside firm to help us look at various ways to analyze it,” NFL executive Eric Grubman said at least week’s owners meetings in San Francisco. “Which is not to say our finance staff is not capable of doing any of the analysis. But sometimes it’s good to have an independent mind take a look at it.”
The fee, Grubman said, could vary from market to market. The Rams in St. Louis, the Chargers in San Diego, and the Raiders in Oakland are all eyeing a possible move to LA after the 2015 season. When all is said and done, there could be a formula developed to set the fee. Or there simply could just be a flat fee determined.
“We’re not very far along in that,” Grubman said. “It’s sort of designing the analysis, and we’re debating the different ways that it could be looked at and the different time frames that could be looked at.”
The relocation fee is designed to compensate club owners for allowing another team to move into a new, lucrative market and basically gets split up among the other teams. It has been estimated that the relocation fee for a Rams move back to LA could be in excess of $500 million for team owner Stan Kroenke.
Grubman said any relocation fee probably wouldn’t be determined until very near the end of the entire relocation process.
“Anybody’s who’s getting into it or asking for a vote would be understanding of what it is,” Grubman said.
There wasn’t any eloquence in his quote. It was over the top. A drama king.
They loved that stuff. In the 20th century, we invented the idea that if you draw attention to the artificiality of your language, you’re insincere and a show off. Before the 20th century, it was like top hit radio music. They ate it up. Sounding “artificial” meant displaying much-loved skills.
But…we just see it different. N thatz kewl. In fact…not sure why I got off on this. Century or no century in the end it’s a matter of taste.
