Analysis: Dear Garrett Bradbury ... sorry, man. Love, Vikings Nation.

Dear Garrett Bradbury …

Sorry, man. Our bad.

Love, Vikings Nation.

Boy oh boy, if there’s one thing the NFL is really good at, it’s taking what appears to be a rock-solid narrative from one season and blowing it to smithereens a year later.

Twelve months ago, Bradbury was at the literal center of the primary reason Sam Darnold was exposed as a quarterback who supposedly couldn’t handle the big stage. A 14-win Vikings team lost the NFC’s No. 1 seed at Detroit and gave up a record-tying nine sacks for 82 yards while getting booted from the playoffs by the Los Angeles Rams eight days later.

Asked after the game whether fixing the offensive line was a priority, coach Kevin O’Connell not only nodded but upped the ante, saying, “We’ve got to find a way to solidify the interior of the pocket, starting first and foremost.”

Amen, K.O.! And good riddance to ya, Garrett!

Darnold led Seattle to the NFC title by matching likely MVP winner Matthew Stafford stride for stride — throwing for 346 yards, three touchdowns, no turnovers and a 127.8 passer rating — in a 31-27 win over Darnold’s no-longer-nemesis Rams on Sunday, Jan. 25. Bradbury, meanwhile, had one of his best games earlier in the day as the New England Patriots won the AFC title 10-7 in a snowstorm in Denver.

Not re-signing Darnold was a business decision on a player who had outplayed the Vikings’ salary cap capacity tenfold while also wilting in the big moment. It aligned with the commitment to a top 10 draft pick (J.J. McCarthy) and the need to spend mightily throughout the roster in free agency.

Bradbury, however, was purely a football decision.

“I had another year on my contract,” Bradbury said in August when the Patriots visited TCO Performance Center for joint practices. “I thought I was going to be back.”

Releasing Bradbury, whom the Vikings selected No. 18 overall in the 2019 NFL draft, was not met with any resistance among fans or media. This observer considered it long overdue. He was wrong. Now he doesn’t see an offseason need that’s any greater than center, the position Bradbury played with durability on O’Connell’s two playoff teams in 2022 and 2024.

Bradbury looked good. Pro Football Focus agreed, giving him an overall grade of 78.8 and a run-blocking grade of 80.6.

Those were Bradbury’s highest grades since Week 9 of the 2024 season. That was the day he posted an overall mark of 80.0 and run-blocking grade of 84.8 as the Vikings beat Indianapolis.

Current Vikings center Ryan Kelly played that day for the Colts. He posted season-low grades of 50.1 overall, 49.8 for run blocking and 45.9 for pass blocking.

He also injured his knee, landed on injured reserve and missed the next five games. A foreshadowing the Vikings ignored.

And yet …

Then the season started. And we discovered that not only was Kelly older than Bradbury, he was also woefully less durable. Three concussions increased Kelly’s career total to six and were the leading cause of him missing nine games. A year after he missed seven games.

Kelly played 329 snaps. That’s 72% of the eight games he appeared in.

Bradbury played 1,072 regular-season snaps. That’s 98% of the 17 games he played. In those games, New England ranked No. 2 in points scored and No. 6 in rushing yards while being led by a 23-year-old quarterback who topped the NFL in completion percentage (72.0) and average yards per attempt (8.9).

And, oh yeah, Bradbury has allowed only one sack in 20 games this season. And, oh yeah, he also has started 51 straight games. And, oh yeah, he has also played every single one of New England’s 193 offensive snaps this postseason en route to Super Bowl LX.

So, again …

Sorry, man. My bad.

To his credit, Bradbury immediately embraced the challenge of being released.

“It’s great to be in New England,” he said in August. “A former player said to me after it all happened that it should be mandatory that everyone play for at least two organizations because you get to reprove yourself, reinvent yourself.

“You get to … see different ways of doing things. I had [Mike] Zimmer and Kevin O’Connell, but that was all I had seen. So now with [Mike] Vrabel, I got a decent perspective on what I think works. I think what he’s doing is going to work.”