Yesterday’s news that the Vikings were activating Teddy Bridgewater and placing Sam Bradford on injured reserve got lots of reaction from the fan bloggers as well as the pro sports writers in the Twin Cities. 1500ESPN‘s Matthew Coller provided some background on Bridgewater’s early development with the Vikings:

Last year, Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer said he never saw himself having another quarterback other than Bridgewater.

The question comes up often: Why are Zimmer and the Vikings’ players so impressed with a quarterback who only threw 14 touchdowns in 2015?

The first reason is that they don’t grade players on touchdowns. It’s really a bad measure of QB play. In 2015, Bridgewater only threw 42 passes in the red zone, while Blake Bortles tossed 95 passes and was one of the league leaders in touchdowns. Nobody would say Bortles is better than Bridgewater. The Vikings were third in the league in rushing touchdowns in ’15 and seventh in Drive Scoring Percentage. Bridgewater was leading his team down the field, but Adrian Peterson was getting the touches when they were in scoring position.

The second reason: Coaches and teammates focus on the game tape (and winning) rather than the box score.

Before we look at some of the things that made Bridgewater so popular – outside of his personality – it should be noted that we can’t know until he plays whether the former first-round pick will be back to his old self or how long it will take him to trust his repaired knee. For some players, they never make a full recovery.

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Vikings quarterback Teddy Bridgewater will return to team practice on Wednesday, fourteen months after his career seemed to be over due to catastrophic injury. The team has a three-week window to observe Bridgewater’s progress before they need to either add him to the roster or move him to the injured reserve list for the remainder of the season. Despite the fan enthusiasm, it’s unrealistic to assume that he would be able to step back into the starting role for at least a few weeks, and Case Keenum is doing a good job of keeping the Vikings afloat while Sam Bradford and Teddy Bridgewater are unable to play.

During Bridgewater’s recovery time, Vikings Territory writer Jordan Reid made contact with him:

From a surprising follow back on Twitter, to actually reaching out to him about his progress just to see how he was doing. I can firmly tell you that Bridgewater is exactly the same type of person behind-the-scenes as he is in the public eye-view. He’s not only the quarterback of my favorite NFL team, but he’s now a personal friend and an athlete that means a lot to me outside of just football.

Many say I’m obsessed with Bridgewater, but that’s definitely not the case. Seeing his hard work, monthly progress and sending various encouraging messages during his injury journey helped me realize and have hope for an athlete that experiences trials and tribulations similar to me and you.

Many times, fans forget that athletes are people just like ourselves and get so trapped into just thinking about the football side of things. Seeing the type of individual he is outside of the public eye-view and experiencing first-hand what he went through the past 14 months has once again given me hope of an eventual return.

[…] Now knowing the type of person he is, the fourth-year quarterback is obviously not for everyone. He will never be the most physically gifted quarterback in the NFL. That’s not Teddy Bridgewater, but what he gives you is hope.

Hope meaning a lot things. No. 5 gives hope to a fanbase that’s never won a Superbowl, but suffered through crushing playoff losses and constant instability at quarterback. Yes, I know he’s only thrown 28 touchdown passes in 30 games, but no matter what it takes or what outsiders think of his traits, he just wants to win.

The one underlying quality that Bridgewater has had since his collegiate days at Lousiville and now as an NFL quarterback is leadership. It’s a trait that can not be taught or developed. As I occasionally say on Twitter, it is a trait that an athlete either possesses or they don’t. It can not be developed over time, but is rather something that they are born with.

From beating Florida in the 2014 Sugar Bowl to sideline jokes with his teammates, and even organizing summer workouts in the off-season with other players around the league, leadership is a quality that Bridgewater undoubtedly has. It is a trait that most successful signal-callers must have in order to instill belief in not only his teammates, but the organization and its fanbase as well.

Regardless of how you feel about Teddy Bridgewater, when he was under-center, the last glimpse we saw of him against the then San Diego Chargers was the most hopeful we all have been of a Vikings team in quite some time. Will he ever return to that status? We won’t know, but what we do know is that he is an exuberant individual that we all will be happy for if he ever gets to play the game that he loves once again.

To the surprise and delight of many Vikings fans, the team posted a short video to their social media accounts on Tuesday afternoon, showing quarterback Teddy Bridgewater taking part in some passing drills at the Vikings’ first organized team activity session at Winter Park:

For the record, count me among the delighted, as I’ve been a Bridgewater fan since he was drafted by the team at the end of the first round in 2014. I don’t dislike Sam Bradford, and I’m grateful the team was able to trade for him, but I hope Bridgewater fully recovers from his injury and is able to return to the starting role at some point (preferably sooner rather than later).

1500ESPN’s Judd Zulgad wonders what we’re expected to take away from the clip:

What type of message are the Vikings attempting to convey?

That’s impossible to tell because the video is only accompanied with dramatic music. There also are three photos of Bridgewater going through practice that were posted on the Vikings’ web site and a brief recap provides no quotes from Bridgewater or anyone else involved with the organization.

The Vikings’ will go through another OTA workout on Wednesday, although unlike with Tuesday’s session, the media will be allowed in for this one. Zimmer, who is taking time off and returned to his Kentucky home after undergoing an eighth surgery on his eye last week, will not be present.

This means offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur will be in charge of answering the many Bridgewater-related questions that are sure to be asked.

There’s no guarantee there will be any answers provided considering the Vikings’ football operations department and their social media folks have very different agendas. The former wants to win football games and likes to keep information in-house, while the latter is after web hits.

There’s no doubt those hits were numerous on Tuesday. As for how much we should read into what this video means about Bridgewater’s recovery? That is likely to remain a mystery, at least to those outside of Winter Park.

At Wednesday’s second OTA practice, general manager Rick Spielman discussed Bridgewater’s progress:

Spielman said it was “very encouraging” to see Bridgewater, who has been throwing to receivers here for at least a few weeks, take the next step by tossing passes at an official organized practice, though he stressed that Bridgewater is still not technically practicing with the team. “Part of the rehab process you saw yesterday was that he is able to drop back and throw the ball,” Spielman said. “He is not cleared for practice, so I want to make that perfectly clear. But he’s working extremely hard in his rehab and we’ll continue to monitor his progress.”

Spielman, as he has done all offseason, declined to share whether the 24-year-old is ahead of schedule in his recovery, only saying, “He’s very limited in what he’s able to do at this point, but it’s progress.” He would not say if Bridgewater might be cleared by the start of training camp, which kicks off a couple of months from now.

Later in the day, it was announced that Bridgewater has been given medical clearance to move on to his next phase of rehabilitation:

In the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Chris Tomasson says it’s unlikely that the Vikings will pick up the fifth-year option on Teddy Bridgewater’s rookie deal, potentially ending his Vikings tenure at the end of the 2017 season:

The Vikings are unlikely to pick up quarterback Teddy Bridgewater’s fifth-year option for 2018, but that wouldn’t necessarily mean 2017 would be his final season with the team.

ESPN first reported Wednesday that the Vikings are not expected to invoke the $12.198 million option by Tuesday’s deadline. Bridgewater suffered a serious knee injury last August that has put his 2017 season is in jeopardy.

“The injury guarantee makes it tough to do,” a source told ESPN.

If Minnesota declines the option, Bridgewater still could end up under contract for 2018. OvertheCap.com and NFL Media reported that if Bridgewater is on the physically unable to perform list throughout 2017, he would remain on the books for 2018 at his same base salary of $1.354 million.

The sides could reach a deal at some point in which Bridgewater’s 2018 contract figure is somewhere between $1.354 million and $12.198 million.

Bridgewater has been with the Vikings since offseason workouts began April 17 at Winter Park. “He’s been in here working as hard as anyone, fighting his way back,” said general manager Rick Spielman.

Declining Bridgewater’s option would indicate that Minnesota regards Sam Bradford most likely its quarterback of the future. If so, Bradford, who will make $18 million in the final year of his deal in 2017, could be in line for an extension before the season starts.

Bradford said Tuesday he doesn’t know of any contract talks between his agent and the Vikings. Spielman said he won’t comment on any player contracts.

For the record, while I like and appreciate Sam Bradford, I’m a fully paid-up member of the Bridgewater Underground, and I really hope that Teddy will fully recover and be able to resume his career sooner rather than later. Head coach Mike Zimmer was quoted as saying “I want Teddy, I don’t want him going somewhere else.” Well spoken, coach!

At the Daily Norseman, Christopher Gates explains that there’s still a chance that Teddy’s option would be picked up … but in 2018, not this year:

Basically, when a contract is “tolled,” it rolls over into the next season. This means that, if Bridgewater spends the entire 2017 season on the Physically Unable to Perform list … and he’d almost undoubtedly start Training Camp there, at the very least … then Teddy Bridgewater would still have one year on his contract with the Vikings when we reach the start of the 2018 league year. The Vikings would then have another chance to decide whether they wanted to pick up his fifth-year option (which would actually then be a sixth-year option) at the price of around $12 million.

Perhaps this is the plan with Bridgewater, then … to have him inactive for the entire 2017 season so that the team can make a decision on him vs. Sam Bradford at the start of the 2018 league year. There’s no point in rushing him back before he’s ready, and if another year off for #5 will ensure the best chance for him to come back and lead the Vikings’ offense, then I absolutely wouldn’t be against that sort of thing at all.

But this new information from Ian Rapoport does help to put today’s earlier news in a bit of a different perspective.

The darkest moment of the 2016 Vikings season was the severe knee injury sustained by quarterback Teddy Bridgewater just before the start of the regular season. While initial reports were confused, it appeared that the injury was potentially life-threatening and that Teddy might never play again. Yesterday, Teddy posted a short video to his Instagram account:

At the Daily Norseman, Christopher Gates reacts:

Obviously, he doesn’t look quite the same at this point, but again … he’s seven months removed from his leg almost falling off, so it’s still pretty impressive. We’ve seen Bridgewater doing agility drills in videos previously, but this is the first time we’ve seen him doing what Mike Zimmer might refer to as “football-related activities.”

We know that Bridgewater has a long way to go (and, if he’s attempting to get back for 2017, a short time to get there). But after what he meant to the team in his first two seasons and how many Vikings fans immediately took to him since he was drafted, it’s hard not to be happy as heck to see this.

Hopefully we’ll have more … and continuing positive … updates on Teddy Bridgewater’s progress.

The Star Tribune reported that Vikings general manager Rick Spielman made a surprising comment on Teddy’s recovery (unrelated to yesterday’s video):

How is Vikings quarterback Teddy Bridgewater’s recovery from a devastating knee injury coming along? This might be a clue: GM Rick Spielman is making a surprising link between Bridgewater’s recovery work and that of former Viking Adrian Peterson during his now legendary comeback. Spielman, at the NFL owners’ meetings, said he watched quarterback Bridgewater last week and was impressed with what he saw. “I know he’s been working extremely hard. As far as a timeline, I know he was in last week and continuing to rehab with our medical staff and [head athletic trainer] Eric Sugarman,” Spielman said. “I can tell you there is no one I’ve seen other than Adrian [Peterson] when he came back from his ACL that has worked as hard as Teddy is working. And this is more significant than just an ACL. “But Teddy is incredible with the attitude and work ethic that he’s put in to get back on the field as quickly as we can.”

Update, 30 March: The infamous Bridgewater Underground is apparently active again!

And when the ‘he’ll never play again’ propaganda reached our shores, more left, and soon we were down to a scant few.

But cracks began to show in The Bradford Army. Small at first, but they grew larger, and more obvious. Obvious to the point they could no longer be ignored if you knew what you were looking for. It took us awhile to realize we weren’t dead, but hope soon returned to us in the form of Instagram and Snap Chat, and hope is a powerful aphrodisiac. Soon, people began returning, and our movement began to rebuild. Slowly at first, but you could feel momentum returning to our cause.

We’ve sent out some cryptic messages, and with each one, more partisans flock back to us. Our numbers grow by the day, and one thing seems clear — we’re coming home. And when we do, we will be ready to reclaim our throne. But we also know that with that, there are dark clouds on the horizon, darker than any dastardly coup.

Which is why these days, my thoughts consume me and sleep escapes me. With each second, the hour draws near, and with each hour, one thing feels more and more certain.

War looms, like Mordor once loomed over Middle Earth. A storm gathers, and it feels like a storm that can’t be avoided. The Bridgewater Underground wants peace, but the Bradford Army is entrenched, ready to defend their leader to the last.

But make no mistake, we are returning home. Home to what is rightfully ours. Maybe not today, maybe not next month, but we will return. We desire a peaceful transition, and we hope no Internet message board blood will be shed. But if there is to be war, then let there be war. It will be uglier than the Ponder-Webb Quarterback Message Board Wars of aught 12 and aught 13, but we are steeled in our resolve.

We are the Bridgewater Underground, and we are coming home.