Eagles' Bradford says he has no regrets after two-week boycott

J UST ABOUT every word Sam Bradford said rang true, until we got to the very last question of Bradford's 13-minute session with reporters Tuesday at NovaCare.

"No," Bradford said, when asked if he had any regrets about the way he and agent Tom Condon handled the Eagles' move to trade up to second overall in the draft and select quarterback Carson Wentz. Bradford and Condon requested a trade, and chose to make that request public, presumably to pressure the Eagles into moving Bradford to Denver, where Condon has said he thought there was considerable interest.

It was never a prudent gamble. The Eagles had made it clear they didn't want to trade Bradford, wanted him to start for them this season, would have to be bowled over by an offer. The Broncos, if they'd been all that intent, would have tried hard to get it done, instead of making a phone call, hearing Howie Roseman's position, and quickly moving on to draft Paxton Lynch.

Now Bradford, endorsed once again Tuesday as the Eagles' starter by new coach Doug Pederson, faces a season in the crosshairs.

"I haven't read it firsthand," Bradford said, when asked if he is aware of how fans have reacted to his trade request and two-week boycott of offseason work. "But other people have made it pretty clear that it's not pretty out there right now."

If you're Bradford, even if you don't regret feeling crushing disappointment over the news of the trade up for Wentz (how would anyone have felt anything else?), even if you don't regret stepping away for a few weeks to reassess, even if you don't regret letting your eye wander over to the quarterbacking situation of the defending Super Bowl champions - you still have to regret letting Eagles fans get the impression you don't want to quarterback their team, aren't tough enough to compete for the job of quarterbacking their team.

That's a toxic impression to leave, one that no amount of well-chosen words can counteract, as Bradford mentioned Tuesday. It will follow Bradford through every downturn of the 2016 season. Depending on how he plays this year, it could follow him to his next team, and for the remainder of his career.

"I get it. They have every right to be frustrated. The only thing I can do going forward is to continue to get better, go out there on Sundays starting in September and play good football and win football games, and hopefully win them back," Bradford said in his first comments since the trade up for Wentz, the draft and his two-week boycott.

"I don't think there's anything I can say. I think it's all about my actions and what I do going forward."

Bradford's Eagles teammates seem to have accepted his return; he and Wentz are off to a good start, with Bradford pledging to help the rookie any way he can. But it might be worth noting that Seattle defensive lineman Michael Bennett told ESPN radio in Seattle that he "almost threw up" listening to Bradford's words Tuesday.

"This guy right here definitely sets a bad tone of what a player should be," said Bennett. "If I was his teammate, how can you play with a guy that doesn't want to compete at a high level and feels like his position should be solidified without even putting up the stats or the wins to back that up?"

Asked about that, Eagles safety Malcolm Jenkins said he thinks people on other teams only know what's happening here "from the headlines," and that he feels the "Bradford afraid to compete" headline is erroneous. "Nobody here thinks like that," he said.

But the issue behind all this is that Bradford is unlikely to remain with the Eagles beyond this season, given what the team has invested in Wentz. Unless he produces a miracle here, Bradford is going to have to sell himself to coaches, players and executives from one of those headline-reading cities next offseason.

Bradford made it clear Tuesday that "there were no promises" made when he signed his two-year, $35 million contract in early March, back when the Eagles were picking 13th in the first round of the draft.

"It wasn't a long-term deal . . . It was a two-year deal. I was well aware of that. We talked about that," Bradford said. "My goal was to play well for the next two years and create that stability that I've talked about pretty much my whole career.

"Philadelphia was the place I wanted to be. I wanted to play well for the next two years, create that stability, and then sign a longer-term deal and stay here for the rest of my career."

When the Eagles' brain trust took him aside before an OTA workout April 20 and told him they had traded up to draft a QB, he did not storm away from NovaCare, he said, as one report indicated. He participated in drills that day and the next. When the sessions ended, Bradford said, Condon called and told him he thought Bradford would be better off elsewhere. In a few radio interviews since, Condon has said the elsewhere he had in mind was Denver, where Peyton Manning had retired and Brock Osweiler had left in free agency for Houston.

"After time and after thought, I realized that this is still the best place for me to be," Bradford said. "There's a lot of guys in that locker room that I really care about, and I know they really care about me. I think some of the conversations I had with some of those guys in the two weeks I was away just made me realize how much I missed being around them, how much I missed being on the field with those guys. Knowing they had my back and knowing how much support they had for me made me realize this is still the right place for me to be."

Along with, of course, the fact that the Denver option dried up quickly. There was no trade market at the level of compensation the Eagles required for a QB they would be paying $11 million this year to play somewhere else.

"Partly so," Bradford acknowledged. "Obviously, my agent felt at the time of the trade that trying to get somewhere to create that stability, a place where I could be entrenched long-term or with the goal of being there long-term, he thought that was the best option. And then, after those two weeks, we realized that this was the best place for me to be."

His approach now will be "week-to-week," Bradford said. "It's always been like that. The competition is what it is. I think if I can continue to play at a high level each week on the field, if we . . . are winning games, I think I will be the starting quarterback . . . With that being said, I'm not completely naïve. I think you realize if the organization made a move to get up to 2, at some point, it's probably not going to be my team. But until it's not, I'm going to continue to lead these guys the way I did last year. And I'm going to do my job to the best of my ability."

Pederson, the Eagles' 1999 starting QB who was disappointed to be benched after nine games for Donovan McNabb, said Bradford didn't have to explain anything to him when he returned. How does Pederson expect Bradford to handle Wentz's presence?

"I expect Sam to not look over his shoulder," Pederson said. "I expect Sam to look forward. He's getting himself ready for the season. He's getting ready for (the season opener against) Cleveland. That's what I expect from Sam."

@LesBowen

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