Philadelphia Eagles

Sam Bradford is proving himself to be the answer for Eagles

Published Aug. 28, 2015 10:34 a.m. ET

foxsports

By Josh Reising

The Philadelphia Eagles breathed a sigh of relief following the legal-but-not ethical hit that was laid on quarterback Sam Bradford by Baltimore Raven linebacker Terrell Suggs. While the hit was legal, many will argue that Bradford was not a factor in the play by the time Suggs had hit the knees of the quarterback.

The Eagles coaching staff are continuing to monitor Bradford. Despite being cleared for full contact, the coaching staff continues to monitor the quarterback, who saw his first live action on the field for the first time since the early part of the 2014 season.

Head coach Chip Kelly said following the team practice on Thursday that he feels that his quarterback has made progression in his comeback “I think he’s beyond the cautious physically,” said Kelly, “it’s just what do we want to get done? What do we want to accomplish?What do we want to see?”

Despite feeling upbeat about where Bradford stands from a physical standpoint, he continues to keep an eye on him “Every week we wait till after today [Thursday] and talk about what we’re going to do rotation wise, and we go through tomorrow’s training session and we finalize it and go from there. So we haven’t had a discussion as a staff yet. We have a big meeting this afternoon on how we’re going to do it and mix and match everybody.”

With the team taking a “wait and see approach,” keeping an eye on the quarterback, offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur praised Bradford following his first preseason game. “He missed a couple of throws and it was more than just getting a little bit more work here in training” says Shurmur, “but in terms of his mechanics and the way he threw and the way he handled himself, we felt like he did a good job.”

Kelly did notice that his quarterback was a little excited in his first go around as an Eagle.

“Yeah, you could tell he was a little amped up. He probably wants to have that throw to [Eagles WR] Riley [Cooper] back where Riley was behind the [defensive back] and try to change Riley’s angle a little bit” says Kelly, “But we don’t want to change angle for depth. But that’s understandable. Not having played football in such a long time, I think that’s just a natural kind of feeling we would anticipate him having.”

As Bradford makes the progression back to playing in a spread offense for the first time since his days at OU, Shurmur points out that their offense will be a little tough to protect one of their prized possessions.

“Well, typically when you hand the ball off, you either set up and show pass, or on most runs, whether you’re under center or in shotgun, you’ll typically fake the naked to try to help control that edge defender. So the good news is we’re in the shotgun, so you can see it all. I think it will probably be a little bit tougher for the guys under center with their backs turned on it. But you’ve just got to protect yourself.”

The team likes what they see in Bradford with his progression, picking up the offense and how he is responding physically on the field. While the progression is coming along slowly, the fact that they their quarterback can take a hit and not get injured makes the coaching staff feel like they got a victory “off the field.” They feel confident that as long as he doesn’t suffer any setbacks with the knee, he should be ready to go for week one of the regular season.

More from cover32: