Bradford Lapses, Brown Benched, Clayton Active

Wednesdays tend to be big news days during football season, but there was a bigger-than-usual information overload today at Rams Park. Not that any of this stuff is earth-shattering, but all of it is newsworthy more that just an injury report or other every-day things.

Let’s start where we usually start: Sam Bradford. Bradford attempted to explain the team’s inability to score in the red zone by saying there are too many mental lapses when the team gets inside the 20. “I think it’s a lack of concentration once we get down there. Some of the mistakes that we do make down there, there’s no reason for them, and we’ve got to find a way to eliminate those.” Bradford went on to say “We get down there and we just continue to shoot ourselves in the foot with either penalties or negative plays that put us behind the chains and put us into bad situations.”The sooner we can eliminate those negative plays, I think the sooner we’ll finally start to see rewards.”

Well, they always say admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery. I think everything he said has been painfully obvious to everyone who has watched this team, but it’s nice to hear him say it. Maybe now that it’s out there, we will see more concentration in those situations. Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking.

Also in the news today, it looks like the Rams have benched center Jason Brown in favor of Tony Wragge. Brown said he was informed by the coaches he won’t be starting on Sunday, but he gave no explanation for the change. I find it curious that the team would make this move now after the offensive line has looked much better over the last few weeks, but I have no problem with shaking things up. Also, the team activated Mark Clayton and added him to the 53-man, so it looks like he will make his 2011 debut against Cleveland this weekend. More on next page…