I’m 64 years old and have been a Bears fan for mostof them. IMHO, and for most of my life, Da Bears have never had an above-average QB, let alone a really good one. Oh, and please don’t bring up McMahon. There has to be a reason. Anyone?
Maybe it’s just a Chicago thing, like how everytime the Cubs get a promising young pitcher, they destroy his arm.
A certain amount of luck is involved, but simple bad draft analysis can be a factor. Not counting players selected too early for the Bears to select:
1990: Passed on Andre Ware (good choice), picked Peter Tom Willis in 3rd (bad)
1991: Passed on Marinovich (good), passed on Favre (bad), picked Paul Justin in 7th (late round pass)
1992: Picked Will Furrer in 4th when Jeff Blake and Brad Johnson were available
1993-1997: No QBs selected by the Bears, who passed on the likes of Mark Burnell, Elvis Grbac, Trent Green, Gus Ferrotte, Kurt Warner, Kordell Stewart, Jake Plummer, Jon Kitna, and countless other even less worthy.
1998: Picked Moses Moreno in the 7th, passing on Charlie Batch, Brian Griese, and Matt Hasselback.
1999: Picked Cade McNown 12th overall (bad*) (but then again, Tim Couch, Donovan McNabb, Aliki Smith, and Daunte Culpepper were all picked ahead of McNown)
2000: Passed on Chad Pennington, Marc Bulger, and (like most teams) Tom Brady.
2001: Passed on Drew Brees
2002: Passed on nobody worth mentioning (Shaun Hill?)
2003: Picked Rex Grossman 22nd overall, passing on Tony Romo (again, like most teams)
2004: Picked Craig Krenzel in the 5th, passing on Matt Schaub
2005: Picked Kyle Orton in the 4th, passing on Aaron Rogers, Jason Campbell, and Matt Cassell
2006: Passed on nobody worth worry over
2007: Passed on Kevin Kolb and the great Troy Smith
2008: Passed on Joe Flacco and Matt Flynn
2009: Traded out from early rounds, with no QBs worth picking anyway
2010: Big Cutler trade, traded picks early (missing out on Tim Tebow!), then picked Dan LeFevour in the 6th
2011: Picked Nathan Enderle in the 5th, passing on Andy Dalton and Colin Kaepernick
2012: Passed on Brandon Weedon
No matter how bad you think Chicago QBs have been, remember that no QB drafted by the Kansas City Chiefs has even won a single game since 1987 (cite).
So then why do the Bears make bad draft choices? And the OP goes back way before 1990.
My answer would be that many teams have gone decades without a good QB. Drafting and keeping a great QB is difficult and the Bears found ways to win without doing so.
Who was the best Bears QB anyway (Superbowl era)? Harbaugh?
Or the they trade him and suddenly he’s winning left and right, while his time with the Cubs was fairly average.
Can’t blame them for Greg Maddux, who left of his own accord after winning a Cy Young Award in Chicago.
Honestly? I think it’s probably Cutler. Not that it’s a real high bar… If he had even an average OL in front of him I think he’d be a serviceable QB, especially with Marshall now. Not a guy who could put an entire team on his back and will them to championships, but how many of those guys have you ever seen?
Agree, Cutler is probably the best of the lot. Even with a good OL, though, he’s average at best. If this was a short term issue for the Bears, it would be a different story. However, as this has gone on for decades there has to be more to the story.
I think money has something to do with it. I assume the franchise is very profitable. If so, why spend the money?
I am not a Bears fan in the least, but this mantra of the Bears ownership not being willing to spend money is pure bollocks. Lovie Smith is one of the highest paid coaches in the NFL, Phil Emery, the GM, is very well compensated, they continue to sign their own players (even to the point of stupidly giving Matt Forte a overhefty contract and perhaps next year signing Jay to another long, overpriced contract), and they are usually close to the salary cap every year.
The Bears lack of a franchise QB has nothing to do with being unwilling to pay for it, but rather because they’ve long been incredibly bad evaluators of QB play.
Evaluating QB’s remains and inexact science. You can go back to guys like Johnny Unitas and bring it up to Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady. Look at the booms and the busts. Some teams were lucky, many others are kicking themselves for their picks.
What should the Skins do with their situation? RGIII is the real deal but can they keep him healthy? They have Cousins who can spell for him and win. Do they bet on RGIII to stay healthy and trade Cousins to fill holes or do they pay to keep two QB’s? I’m glad I’m not the GM making that decision. Who knows, Cousins could be a flash or the next Aaron Rodgers.
There’s the problem in the NFL with teams that finish in the playoffs but can’t win the Super Bowl. They are caught in a middle ground. They are not good enough to take it all and are not bad enough to get high draft picks. Then they start to live on hope and I think that’s where the Bears find themselves.
Maybe this season has been a blessing for the Lions. They have a QB and some good players but their tough losses will give them higher draft picks that might put them in an elite status. Who knows?
Yeah, except now we won’t get punished for it under the cap. Stafford was a high pick, Suh was a high pick, and Calvin Johnson was a high pick. All three came in before the rookie salary ceiling was established.
I think that’s the answer. The Bears haven’t had a great quarterback? Neither have most teams; join the club.
As Hamlet correctly states, the Bears aren’t too cheap to have a star QB. The Bears always spend what it takes. They are fiscally conservative, this is true, but that’s not the same thing as cheap. By conservative I mean they prefer to pay for known or predictable quantities. They always re-up their own talent, even when that talent is high-character, high-effort but low-upside. They always sign the free agents who come with little risk, that either means they are cheap or that means they have a low floor but also a low ceiling. By being fiscally conservative the Bears almost always ensure they are solid but rarely terrible or great.
The main reason the Bears don’t have a great QB is that they simply don’t prioritize it. It’s not that they are bad at evaluating them, evaluating QBs is always a dicey proposition, very few teams are reliable at it. It’s that you NEVER see the Bears drafting QBs to develop and they don’t draft guys that fall to them when they have a starter in place. The Bears for 80 years have prioritized defense and running the ball. This still hasn’t changed.
Teams like Packers and Patriots aren’t markedly better at evaluating QBs than everyone else. They just value the position enough to draft quality players even when they have rock solid starters in place. The Packers saw a guy fall in Rodgers are drafted him when they had other needs. The Patriots took a flier on a 6th rounder even though they had a Pro Bowler in Bledsoe. The Pats continued to do so in Cassel, Hoyer and Mallett. The Packers took guys like Martin, Brohm and Flynn in spite of the presence or Rodgers.
The teams that value QBs above all tend to hit more home runs because they take more swings. Some teams are flat out lucky like the Colts just happening to have the #1 overall pick when the dumbest GM is sports couldn’t even screw it up, but when averaged out over a half-century it comes down to priorities.
Yeah, I certainly think that’s a part of it, what **Omni **talked about. And I don’t think that Chicago is really no different than other teams, as some have suggested: they’re pretty clearly on the low end of the distribution curve when it comes to passing stats, and while some of that is simply luck, I’m pretty sure there are reasons.
I’d suggest that one has to look at the situation holistically. It’s hard to separate the quality of a quarterback’s play from that of the passing offense as a whole. For instance, perhaps the Bears have targeted offensive lineman who specialize in run blocking more than pass protection (I don’t know whether that’s actually true, but it wouldn’t surprise me). What’s easier to quantify is that Chicago has shown even less interest in acquiring talent at WR than at QB. Their list of franchise receiving leaders is, frankly, pathetic, and I’d be surprised if any franchise in recent times has shown less interest in improving the WR position.
In 1993, the Bears drafted the immortal Curtis Conway in the 1st Round. Since that year, they’ve drafted only four WRs in the first two rounds of the draft, including just one 1st Rounder. Compare this to the Giants, a similarly conservative franchise: in that time span they’ve spent more than twice as many high picks on WRs (3 Firsts and 6 Seconds). Nor have the Bears made up for this neglect on the free agent or trade market – until they got Brandon Marshall last offseason, I can’t remember them ever getting as high-profile a wideout as, say, Plaxico Burress.
Which is all a long-winded way of saying that it’s probably not so much that the bears have had lousy QB play as it is that they’ve had lousy passing offenses. For instance, when Kyle Orton and Jay Cutler switched teams in between the 2008 and 2009 seasons, the numbers for “QB Bears” and “QB Broncos” stayed a lot more consistent than the numbers for “Jay Cutler” and “Kyle Orton,” because there’s a lot more that goes into a QB’s numbers than his own ability. Context matters.