Here's the good news, if you like Sam Bradford and hope the St. Louis Rams' 2010-vintage savior succeeds (or if you just like the Rams and hope they succeed): Matt Stafford was going into his third season as an unsuccessful No. 1 overall quarterback last year. He was worse—Bradford had his inefficient-but-high-volume rookie season, with his nice counting stats, and he at least played 10 games instead of three.

In his third season, Matt Stafford—with Scott Linehan as his offensive coordinator—went full-on Turf-Show on the NFC, putting up 5038 yards and 41 touchdowns in 663 attempts.

Bradford won't have nearly as many attempts, no matter how good he is, because Jeff Fisher and Brian Schottenheimer are determined to make the Rams' offense boring. But if he could get his yard-per-attempt number up into the range Stafford have last year—7.6—we would stop having the bust conversation in a hurry.

Right now his career number is 6.0, so that's a bit of a leap. But Stafford's, before last season, was 5.9.