Sam Bradford has had a disappointing season, both before and after the injuries. St. Louis Rams fans—almost all of whom now own Sam Bradford jerseys—have allowed themselves to admit as much. After a promising (if limited) rookie season and enough excitement, ahead of Josh McDaniels's debut as offensive coordinator, for visions of a 4000-yard season to dance in our heads, Bradford, while dealing with a high-ankle sprain, has had exactly one-and-a-half of the kind of games we were hoping for all year—his 328 yard performance in Green Bay, hamstrung by the Rams' season-long inability to get into the end zone, and about half of his Monday Night Football show in New York, where he and Danario Alexander briefly fulfilled all the dreams we'd imagined for them.
Aside from that: Ugliness. He's been maybe a little better than we think—inasmuch as he was a little worse than we thought last year—but it hasn't been good, and it's ended with Kellen Clemens playing out the string and the Rams on the verge of an Andrew Luck sighting in NFL Mock Drafts.
So Sam Bradford, alas, isn't a Hall of Famer yet. But could he still be one? Over the next few days we'll be looking at Canton quarterbacks who got off to starts as ignominious as 2011 has been for the Rams' ex-savior, and seeing how, when, and why they pulled out of that tailspin and figured things out on the way to Ohio. So subscribe to this storystream—"like" it on Facebook—and hope against hope that, come 2012, you'll be able to wear your Bradford jersey again.