For fans of the Philadelphia Eagles, clinging desperately to the hope that two ACL tears and an abysmal track record as a starting quarterback for the St. Louis Rams doesn't portend a similar level of failure for quarterback Sam Bradford now that he's operating under head coach Chip Kelly, the report that he nearly quit the NFL after his second major knee injury probably won't provide much in the way of a confidence boost.
Bradford, who tore the ACL in his left knee last August - his second ACL tear in nine months -, begun entertaining the notion of calling it a career shortly after the injury.
"Yeah. I'd be lying to you if I told you that there wasn't (that feeling)," Bradford told Jim Thomas of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch at the time. "It was really tough that first week after the injury. There was part of me for a couple days where I was done with football. I didn't want to come back. I didn't want to play. I was tired of rehabbing. I was just tired of the process."
What kept the former Heisman-winner and first-overall pick in the 2010 NFL Draft from giving up on his NFL dream before it ever really seemed to take shape?
A phone call from a former coach at Oklahoma.
"It was one of those moments where, after all the time and energy and passion that he poured into rehabilitating himself in the first injury, you feel like you're snakebitten,"Josh Heupel, Bradford's former quarterback coach at Oklahoma said, per Mike Sielski of The Philadelphia Inquirer. "You don't know when, if, or how your body is going to respond and what your next opportunity is. You're really just in a lot of limbo. Sometimes, I think, just having a voice from an outside perspective is something that can be valuable."
Heupel said he simply tried to convey to Bradford that, though he understood the anger and frustration, the elite ability that made him the first-overall pick in the draft was still within him.
"When a player goes through a big letdown, it's natural to be down," said Heupel. "I just tried to reach out to him and say, 'Hey, I still see this in you as a person and a player. I think the best is yet to come for you. You've got to get yourself healthy and get yourself back on the field and get yourself in the right environment with the right people and the right supporting cast around you, and there's no doubt in my mind you'll achieve the things you're capable of achieving and want to achieve.'
While it's not exactly inspiring to hear that a player who suddenly holds the key to the Eagles offense in hands had to be convinced to return to the football field at all, it's also hard to fault a guy for questioning his own NFL future after successive major injuries.
It remains to be seen if Bradford can reclaim his once-promising career with the Eagles - and justify the decision to trade away Nick Foles and a 2016 second-round pick in the process - but it seems that another major injury with the Eagles may indeed spell the end of his run as an NFL quarterback.
