Turns out Sam Bradford actually can throw the ball farther than six yards.
One of the few positives that came out of the Eagles’ loss to the Redskins Sunday was the Eagles' rediscovery of the deep ball.
The long pass, a staple of the Eagles' offense with Donovan McNabb, Michael Vick and Nick Foles at quarterback, was absent in Bradford’s first four games as Eagles quarterback.
Bradford, who went into the weekend as one of only four NFL starting quarterbacks who hadn’t hit a pass of at least 35 yards, hit Miles Austin for a 39-yard touchdown and Riley Cooper for a 62-yarder and connected with rookie Nelson Agholor on a 45-yarder.
The Eagles lost again, falling to 1-3, but it was a breakthrough of sorts for Bradford, who entered the game with the lowest yards-per-attempt among all active NFL quarterbacks. He is now up to 26th of 36.
“Obviously, it’s good to finally put that on tape,” Bradford said after practice Wednesday. “It’s not something we’ve been trying to shy away from, it just hadn’t really presented itself until last Sunday.
“But now that it’s out there, I think teams have to respect us pushing the ball down the feld. And obviously it’s something that we’re going to try to do. We did it with some success Sunday and hopefully that will back people off and open up some of the intermediate stuff.”
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Whether it was Donovan to DeSean, Vick to Maclin or Foles to Cooper, we’ve gotten used to the deep ball around here.
No team in the NFL has hit more over the last decade and a half.
During his 11 years with the Eagles, McNabb hit 105 passes of 40 yards or more. Only Brett Favre — with 107 — compiled more during that span, from 1999 through 2009.
Even in the five years post-Donovan, the Eagles led the NFL with 62 pass plays of at least 40 yards — 27 by Vick, 22 by Foles, six by Mark Sanchez, three each by Kevin Kolb and Vince Young and one by Mike Kafka.
So when Bradford didn’t even look deep, much less throw deep, the first three games of the season, it was glaring.
But deep balls take precision and timing, and Bradford simply had very little work in the preseason games. So maybe it just took him this long to develop enough chemistry with his new receivers to take those deep shots.
“I think that could be part of it,” he said. “The more reps you get at anything the more comfortable you become, the better you feel about things.
“That’s the way I feel right now. That could play a part in why we had success on Sunday with that.”
Bradford on Sunday became the first Eagles quarterback in seven years to complete passes of at least 39 yards to three different receivers.
In the 2008 opener against the Rams, McNabb hit DeSean Jackson for 48 yards, Greg Lewis for 52 yards and Hank Baskett for 90 yards.
Bradford has still yet to put together a complete game, but his second half Sunday was encouraging.
He was 10-for-18 for 195 yards and three touchdowns in the second half, finishing the game with a 122.6 passer rating, second-highest of his career.
He became the first Eagles quarterback to throw three second-half touchdowns since Foles against the Vikings in 2013.
Bradford's 9.6 yards per attempt was also second-highest of his career and nearly four yards per pass higher than his first three games in an Eagles uniform.
“I think in that second half we just found a rhythm, I found a rhythm, where I was just really confident out there in everything we were doing,” he said.
“And I feel once you get into a rhythm like that or you get your confidence then you start making some throws that you feel like they can’t cover.”
Confidence is a recurring theme with Bradford, and it’s been fleeting this year. He’s had some truly terrible stretches and a few very impressive ones.
With very little in between.
He said the more he plays in Chip Kelly’s offense and the more live work he gets with his receivers, the better he’ll be.
“You go through training camp and it’s your base offense, base package, and then you get into games and you start to gameplan a little bit and there’s been some things that maybe were relatively new to me,” he said.
“But now I feel like I’ve got a better grasp of what we’re trying to do both in the run game and the pass game now that we’ve got a few weeks under our belt. I just feel better about it.”
And maybe as Bradford’s confidence level in Kelly’s offense grows, Kelly’s confidence in Bradford will grow and he’ll begin dialing up more and more deep balls.
“Hopefully, he’s gaining more confidence in me,” Bradford said. “Obviously, the more I’m out there, the more we’re together, he learns what I’m comfortable, what I like, he gets a better sense in what gets us going, so hopefully that relationship will just continue to get better.”
Hoping to see more deep balls Sunday?
The Eagles couldn’t have picked a better opponent.
The Eagles host the Saints Sunday at the Linc, and they’ve already allowed an NFL-high six pass plays of 40 yards or more. Five of those have gone for 50 yards or more.
Opposing quarterbacks have a 116.3 passer rating against the Saints this year, with seven touchdowns and no interceptions. (Though the Saints' secondary did welcome back top corner Keenan Lewis and safety Jairus Byrd last week.)
“We’re going to try," Bradford said. "Obviously, we feel like maybe we’ve got some speed mismatches outside this week with some of our wide receivers against their corners.”