NFL Draft Rumors: Some teams prefer Sam Bradford over Marcus Mariota?

The draft rumors keep getting sillier. This time, there's talk of Sam Bradford. Yes, the man who was drafted first overall five years ago and has done absolutely nothing to justify it since. According to Jason Cole of Bleacher Report, "some teams" at the top of the draft prefer Sam Bradford to Marcus Mariota. Nice and vague. Here's the transcript, via Bleeding Green Nation.

"This is really fascinating because there are teams that are sitting at the top of the draft, according to executives that I've talked to, who would believe that they would prefer to have Sam Bradford, who's 27 and coming off basically missing the last year and a half of his career - that they would rather have then take a chance on, say, somebody like Marcus Mariota or Jamies Winston because they have seen what Bradford can do. One caveat to this is: is Bradford healthy or not coming off of two ACL surgeries? But the belief is: take a shot with Bradford and save your first round draft pick and take somebody else."

This is so. incredibly. dumb. Yeah, I've seen what Sam Bradford can do: be a thoroughly mediocre game manager who gets injured every other year. Seriously, Bradford has completed exactly two 16-game seasons over five years. He's completed just 58.6% of his passes for an abysmal 6.3 yards per attempt. That's almost worse than Alex Smith at that point in his career -- and at least Smith stayed healthy.

Yeah, sure, Bradford hasn't had the greatest supporting cast known to man. And maybe, just maybe, there's a chance he elevates his game this late in his career. But he's still the same guy he was as a rookie: a reasonably accurate, overly conservative game manager who's a little deliberate and not particularly good at anything he does. He's a good backup.

If the Bucs want all of that, they can just start Mike Glennon instead of going after a mediocre quarterback. But that's not what they want, which is why they traded away that other backup quarterback, Josh McCown.

All of this is a moot point, anyway. The Rams are committed to Sam Bradford, again, because they basically have no better options. He's not going anywhere. The Bucs are not about to trade for him. Instead, expect either Marcus Mariota or Jameis Winston to be under center in Tampa this year.