Mere hours after Sam Bradford went down on Saturday night I saw reports of players the Rams were going to go after in a trade to replace him. I picture Shaun Hill quietly sticking his head out saying, “H…Hi guys. I’m Shaun Hill, the backup quarterback for the St. Louis Rams. My job is to play in case the starter gets hurt.” I was hoping we would get someone who has started within the last three years, but what we are really looking for is a big name that we think will be the answer. There are not any starting QBs to trade for right now. Any name we get will either be another backup or not playing at all right now. The popular choice Saturday night was Philadelphia Eagles backup Mark Sanchez. Sanchez has two all-right years under his belt in a five-year career, including 2013 when he never even threw a pass. His yards per game are under 200 and he has thrown more interceptions than touchdowns. Why is this the guy that can get it done? Because he knows the system? So did Kellen Clemens, but where did that get us last year? The next most popular name is Ryan Mallett. Really? Please. This is a guy who has zero starts in his career and has only thrown the ball four times during games – and one of those was an interception. Just because he comes from New England and there seems to be a bit of hype around him it means this is the right guy to take an upcoming franchise to the playoffs? Let me counter with one name – Matt Cassel. Cassel was not the answer the Chiefs were looking for, and is now starting for the Vikings. If he was as good as he was in New England, he would still be playing for Kansas City. I am not even going to get into the fantasy booking of Michael Vick (who pretty much gave up being a starter) or Tim Tebow (I’m not going any further with that one).
This brings us back to Shaun Hill. A backup needs to be a guy that can take the reins of a team in case of an injury and lead the team to victory. If we are going to be trading for another backup to do that, then why did we pick up Hill anyway? Going into this season there were many concerns about Bradford’s health, which is why we cut Clemens loose and picked up Hill – so that in case Bradford didn’t hold up we’d have somebody who could step in and be a winner. Lower your expectations for the guy. If he were starter material he wouldn’t be playing as a backup. We all hoped that Bradford would be able to lead this team to the playoffs and he only came close once in his rookie year. I do not think this year would be any different. This is a team that relies on the defense and sometimes that is all you need to win championships. Jeff Fisher says Hill is our guy and, of course, he would. It’s not like he is going to question that publicly and lower morale. But as of right now there seems to be no plan in place to get anyone else. This is our team for the year. Shaun Hill is the guy for the year. Maybe 2015 will see us starting a rookie QB, but we have to get through 2014 first.
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