Without a true starter, where do Bears begin?
Lovie Smith is an unfailingly polite man who is as direct as he is deliberate. But even for him, this week’s conversation with Rex Grossman had to be a little bit awkward.
What do you say to the quarterback you broke up with a month ago?
Hey, Rex. I know I pulled the plug on your starting status back in Week 4, but we need you this week. Brian Griese’s left shoulder is a little sore, and heck, why have a noodle-armed mistake-prone quarterback when you can have a strong-armed mistake-prone quarterback? Besides, your adamant refusal to do anything other than huck the ball deep worked out pretty well against Seattle those two games last season.
So you’re our man. At least this week. Go get ‘em, tiger.
Inspiring, huh?
Actually, not so much. Things are going to be a little uneasy. In fact, the Bears’ season is in danger of capsizing because the most important position on the field is also the Bears’ most uncertain.
“It’s been a huge topic around here for pretty much my whole career with the revolving door we’ve had,” linebacker Brian Urlacher said of the quarterback. “Now we have two guys that have done a pretty good job for us; whoever plays, plays.”
That’s a problem because a team needs a definitive answer to the question of who its No. 1 quarterback is. It’s a little bit like religion in that way. If you believe in more than one, you’re going to run into trouble.
Now, this isn’t Smith’s fault. He stood by Grossman while his quarterback rating yo-yoed its way through the season, and the Bears still ended up in the Super Bowl.
But this offseason, the Bears did nothing to improve the situation under center except hope Grossman stopped making so many darn errors. Three games and six interceptions into this season, Smith had no choice but to yank him. The problem wasn’t the removal so much as the replacement. Plan B was no improvement: Brian Griese was intercepted 10 times in his first five games before suffering an injury to his left shoulder last week.
That leaves the Bears with two consecutive division titles, a defense in its prime and a huge question mark at quarterback. The Bears spent years and millions of dollars putting together a championship-caliber vehicle but are left choosing which demolition-derby driver to put behind the wheel.
“You like to be in a situation where you do have one guy that takes off with it, but it didn’t work like that,” Smith said. “A lot of places deal with situations like we have right now.”
That means a lot of places have problems. A successful NFL team demands a hierarchy at quarterback. There’s a starter and there’s a backup. Maybe that backup is a veteran who’s a fail-safe if the starter gets hurt, maybe that backup is a young guy being groomed as a successor who will at some point supplant the starter. It’s when the delineation at quarterback breaks down that a team runs into trouble. Who is it supposed to rally behind?
Jacksonville experienced some of this uncertainty last year when coach Jack Del Rio benched Byron Leftwich for David Garrard. Del Rio said Leftwich wasn’t 100 percent healthy, Leftwich said he was fine to play, and the rest of the team was left scratching its head. Did that affect the Jaguars?
“I think it did,” said Seahawks safety Deon Grant, who played in Jacksonville last season. “Because the quarterback is the head of the team.”
The Jaguars lost their final three games and missed the playoffs.
Mike Holmgren has seen controversies, too. He once benched Jon Kitna to start Brock Huard, only to have an injury put Kitna back on the field. A couple of years later, the competition between Matt Hasselbeck and Trent Dilfer became a local debate as messy as any of Seattle’s mass-transit boondoggles.
It’s the kind of thing a coach wants to avoid at any position, let alone the most important one.
“It creates this whole thing where now people take sides,” Holmgren said. “The emotions within the stadium on a play, that changes. Then they start chanting for the other guy, and I mean, it’s a mess.”
That’s what Chicago has right now: a mess. Two players, one job and no indication that either is the answer at that position.
Danny O’Neil: 206-464-2364 or doneil@seattletimes.com