Fantasy Football Quarterbacks: Sam Bradford’s New Receivers, Coordinator Could Mean Major Improvement

You can’t really think of Sam Bradford as a sleeper pick when it comes to drafting fantasy football quarterbacks or doing just about anything else. He’s a young, popular starter, a famous college star, and has already been appointed as the St. Louis Rams‘ last and best savior of the post-Kurt-Warner epoch.

But–if he’s not a sleeper, Sam Bradford could at least be a pleasant surprise for already-satisfied owners in keeper leagues. A new offensive coordinator and some different options at wide receiver could mean a much more dynamic Bradford in 2011.

It’s difficult to say whether it was the receivers or offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur that caused it, but competent quaerterbacking rarely gets more boring than what Sam Bradford managed in 2010; he didn’t make a ton of mistakes, and he managed to deal with an extremely high workload for a true rookie in spite of his shoulder problems, but his yards-per-attempt was among the lowest in football, and his effectiveness was compromised by the risk-averse offense the Rams ran. With Danny Amendola and a rotating cast of tight ends as his favorite targets, the only chance Bradford got to throw downfield was on the two or three occasions Danario Alexander was even kind of healthy all year.

Josh McDaniels, the guy who made Kyle Orton into a dangerous quarterback, will not appreciate that kind of dinking and dunking. With a new system, Bradford might be a lot of things in 2011–but he won’t be boring.