Sam Bradford scares me.

Billy Devaney says that the release of Marc Bulger doesn't mean the Rams are locked into selecting Sam Bradford with the top pick in the draft.

Billy Devaney apparently thinks that we're all idiots.

Lying is all part of the business in the NFL, as Ross Tucker pointed out a few days ago. You don't listen to what teams say, you pay attention to what they do. It's been obvious from what Devaney's been saying for a couple of months at least that Bradford was going to be the guy if his shoulder checked out. It apparently has, and what the Rams have done with the release of Bulger, is pretty obviously clearing the decks for Bradford's arrival, no matter what Devaney says with a microphone in front of him.

So why am I particularly scared? Well, let me say, I'm certainly not convinced that Bradford is going to be a bust. I see nothing in his record or his makeup that suggests that he's going to crash and burn. Ordinarily, any time I see "accuracy" at the top of a QB's list of positives in a draft report, I'm a happy man. Mechanics can and have been improved at the professional level. Systems can be learned, and everything that goes on between a QB's ears is going to have to improve anyway. But I've yet to see a QB who was a scattershot in college become a sharpshooter in the NFL. It just doesn't happen. So on that score, Bradford checks out.

The issue that nags at me is this, as expressed in another scouting report, is that "the Oklahoma system involves the team looking to the sideline to get the play. The reading of the D is done by the coaching staff in the booth, relayed to the sideline and given to the QB." Ugh.

Any QB who has worked in a spread system in college is going to have a sharp learning curve in the NFL, sharper than someone who played in a pro-style system. This is not insurmountable, of course, but anything that makes the learning process more difficult isn't something you can shake off, and the record of spread QBs entering the NFL suggests that it's a meaningful issue. In Bradford's case, while the Oklahoma system isn't exclusively a spread, he's coming from a college system that didn't ask him to make pre-snap reads on his own. He's been running an offense with training wheels, with a coach holding his hand along the way.

Again, this isn't insurmountable. There's nothing that says that Bradford can't adjust while he's earning a paycheck. However, it makes the learning curve that much steeper. Bradford will be entering a situation with no proven playmakers at receiver or tight end, with an offensive line that is at best suspect with regard to pass protection and has a cornerstone young tackle with concussion issues. And he'll do it with an epic learning curve for the mental side of the game.

By all accounts, Bradford is smart. He'd better be brilliant.