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Sam Bradford to Vikings - Great Impact?
One of the biggest stories leading up to the start of the 2016 NFL season was the Sam Bradford trade out of Philadelphia to Minnesota. Minnesota seemingly feels that it has a legitimate shot for a great season after good performance a year ago and wanted to ensure that a Teddy Bridgewater injury wasn’t creating any roadblocks to success.
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Is Sam Bradford the right answer to beat Green Bay in the divisional race and win the NFC North again? Accuscore ran a few different scenarios to evaluate the Sam Bradford trade from the Vikings’ point of view, but also to figure out the trade impact for Philadelphia.
The Vikings’ chances to repeat as NFC North champs with Shaun Hill are slim. Accuscore’s season forecast predicts 8 wins and 33% probability to reach playoffs with Hill under center. Both Green Bay and Detroit project to finish ahead of the Vikings during this season.
When running the same simulation with Sam Bradford quarterbacking the Vikings, the results are only slightly better. Still, the Vikings expect to finish third in the NFC North and their chances for the playoff spot are only slightly improved to 36%. Bradford won’t bring any extra wins and only a slightly higher probability to reach playoffs. Either way, making the playoffs is not likely for the Vikings.
Did Philadelphia sell their season with Bradford? Now, there will be recently injured rookie quarterback taking the snaps. When Bradford was listed as a starting QB for Eagles, the simulation gave them 7 wins and 19% probability of reaching the playoffs, which isn’t great. Sounds like a season of rebuilding after the Chip Kelly experiment was called off.
With Carson Wentz as a starting quarterback in 17 regular season games, the Eagles will have only 6 wins and their chances to get into playoffs will drop under 17%. Essentially, it’s not too big of a drop from Bradford to Wentz. One win means a great deal in the NFL, but the expectation of missing the playoffs is expected either way. And the Eagles now have the notable upside of an extra first round draft pick in 2017 draft.
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