NORMAN — Spring football practice arrives at OU next week, and you would think there would be little quarterback drama.
Sorry, hotshots Kid Nichol and Landry Jones, but Sudden Sam Bradford is entrenched, as anyone should be after throwing 36 touchdown passes and just eight interceptions in a Big 12 championship year.
But this spring offers plenty of quarterback intrigue for the trained football eye. Not on who gets the job, but on how well the job is done.
Bradford in 2007 was a superb freshman quarterback. That does not mean he was a superb quarterback period. Sudden Sam's gaudy numbers hide the truth that he was a functional quarterback, a system quarterback, last season. A good system quarterback. Dang good.
But not a playmaker. Not a quarterback who can rise above the breakdown of a play.
Missouri's Chase Daniel could and did. Kansas' Todd Reesing, too, much of the season. OSU's Zac Robinson. Texas' Colt McCoy. Either with their arm or their legs or both, all were quarterbacks who excelled outside the script, quarterbacks who could, if chaos arrived, improvise to great acclaim.
Bradford, not so much.
OU coaches put Bradford in position to succeed famously, and he complied most Saturdays. But the schemes and the opponents don't always cooperate. Recall Colorado, Iowa State, West Virginia.
Bob Stoops' staff doesn't mask it in terminology like "functional” and "playmaker,” but that's what they mean when they talk about Bradford's progression as a quarterback. Last autumn, when groundswell started to clear room for another statue in Heisman Park, coaches praised Bradford mightily but cautiously. Bradford in '07 was not the finished product.
Bradford is amazingly accurate; 69.5 completion percentage as a freshman. You can't get much better than that. No quarterback ever has.
But Bradford can improve. Can get better. Can become a quarterback who can make something out of nothing.
"He's already an accomplished quarterback,” Stoops said. But "the guy is so young. He's going to be incredibly special.”
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