One thing about the Bears: They have taken their 20th Century search for a quarterback to new heights of absurdity. They are making Larry Rakestraw look like a good idea after all. John Huarte, where are you now? Come back, Gary Huff, all is forgiven. P.T. Willis, about those six interceptions you just threw in the Arena League playoff? Not bad. And isn’t Will Furrer looking for work?
Everybody thought the Bears used to bumble around when it came to decisions on the most important position. But the Rick Mirer fiasco makes the old days seem logical and prudent. George Halas once got rid of Bobby Layne after drafting him No. 1. He let George Blanda go to the AFL. Those guys went on to Hall of Fame careers, and Halas already had enough Hall of Famers.
Trading Mike Ditka for Jack Concannon doesn’t look bad at all compared with the Rick Mirer trade. Is Bobby Douglass, always in shape, really much older than Steve DeBerg? Vince Evans isn’t. He’s always waiting for the phone to ring. Suddenly, Dave Krieg looks young.
Virgil Carter came back once after calling Halas chicken. Nobody remembers anymore. Why can’t Carter come back twice? Even Kent Nix was a hero for one game.
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Maybe Mirer will get further without the Bears than he did with them. Jim Harbaugh did. So did Mike Tomczak and Doug Flutie. At least those quarterbacks did something when they were here too.
Mike Hohensee did more than Mirer, and all he did was quarterback the 1987 replacement team. Until Ditka got angry at him. After all, he was around for almost three weeks. Rusty Lisch, Ditka didn’t really mean to be so mean. Isn’t Steve Fuller still on the roster?
Jim McMahon still lives in town. So does Bob Avellini. Steve Walsh is in Tampa, but he would cost too much. He’s the last one to take the Bears to the playoffs. Is Paul Justin untouchable in Cincinnati?
At the time, there was worry that the Mirer deal too closely resembled the Mike Phipps trade. These Bears should have been so lucky. After costing the Bears their 1978 No. 1 draft choice, Phipps was considered an abject failure. But he threw nine touchdown passes in leading the 1979 Bears to a wild-card playoff berth. All hail to Mr. Phipps.
This didn’t have to happen. Erik Kramer didn’t have to break his neck and leave Dave Wannstedt in the noose. Wannstedt and Rod Graves and whoever was watching tape didn’t have to fall in love with Mirer. They could have stepped back and thought:
“Hmmmmmmm, we need a tight end and we need a quarterback. Let’s draft Tony Gonzalez in the first round and then Jake Plummer instead of John Allred in the second round.”
Wouldn’t that have made more sense than Allred in the second round one year and Alonzo Mayes in the fourth round the next? Isn’t that a little like punter Chris Gardocki in the third round one year and punter Todd Sauerbrun in the second round four years later?
Maybe Mark Hatley would have done it differently. Don’t forget the sequence. While Mike McCaskey was letting Graves dangle as a lame duck and tend to details such as the draft, Hatley still was working for the Kansas City Chiefs. He spent a whole lot of time studying Mirer, who was in the same division. He didn’t have much interest in him when the Chiefs were looking for a quarterback and signed Elvis Grbac for slightly less than the Bears paid Mirer. The Chiefs also were looking for a tight end, and drafted Gonzalez.
Hatley still is looking for a quarterback. It will be the first priority in the next draft, when a whole lot of them are available. That might give Bears fans hope were it not for a lifetime of experience. The question now is whether Central Florida’s Daunte Culpepper, Washington’s Brock Huard, UCLA’s Cade McNown, Kentucky’s Tim Couch, Stanford’s Chad Hutchinson or Syracuse’s Donovan McNabb–if they all declare draft eligibility–will be better than Eastern Michigan’s Charlie Batch or Michigan’s Brian Griese, both available this year when the Bears selected center Olin Kreutz.
Griese’s passer rating this preseason is better than Ryan Leaf’s or Peyton Manning’s. Doesn’t mean much, yet. But the Bears have made mistakes before. Have they ever.