No Pro Bowls since Ronald Reagan was president. No Hall of Fame since the Elvis Presley was changing the landscape of music. The Chicago Bears have truly moved at a glacial pace when it comes to the quarterback position. Incredible to think about considering they were one of the franchises to first take it mainstream back in the 1940s with Sid Luckman and that T-Formation everybody loves to sing about.
Staying on the cutting edge is how one wins in the NFL, but the Bears forgot that lesson and have been paying for it ever since. If not for a historic defense and all-time great running back they wouldn't even have one Super Bowl title. Meanwhile teams like New England, New Orleans and Indianapolis have won with average backs and decent defenses. Why?
They had quarterbacks.
Now the Bears are trying to enter that exclusive club yet again. Can they get one who understands both the physical and mental sides of the game? What must they do to succeed where past regimes have so spectacularly failed? One Hall of Fame GM has great advice for what it will actually take to pull it off.
Bears fans know the name Ron Wolf well. He was the architect of a decade of sorrow in the 1990s as general manager of the Green Bay Packers. He completely flipped the script on the entire rivalry back in those days and it was because he seemed to have the magic touch at quarterback. His trade to acquire Brett Favre from Atlanta remains one of the greatest steals in NFL history.
[video width="854" height="480" mp4="https://www.sportsmockery.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Top-5-Brett-Favre-Moments-2016-Pro-Football-Hall-of-Fame-Class-NFL.mp4"][/video]
This isn't even counting some of the other quality passers he drafted during that period. Mark Brunell and Matt Hasselbeck would both go from being Favre backups to three-time Pro Bowlers elsewhere. Wolf had a certain philosophy about drafting quarterbacks. It involved trying to draft one every year and putting them under a good coaching staff.
However, he must have some sort of secret. He must know the key to finding the good ones, right? As a matter of fact he does. He said as much during an interview with the MMQB back in December.
“It’s blind luck,” Wolf said. “If I knew how to put together a quarterback, I’d have my own island somewhere. “People would come to me, show me tape, and we’d discuss this and that. There’s just no question it has always been a difficult position to evaluate. When I was growing up, when the Colts came back to pro football in 1953, there were 12 teams in the league. I’d say seven had quarterbacks, and five didn’t. Now if you look at the 32 teams, maybe half have quarterbacks, and half don’t. Sometimes you don’t know what a guy has in college until you bring him in...."Wolf explained his thought process by citing the many examples around the NFL. Tom Brady, the greatest ever going in the sixth round. Dallas reeling in Dak Prescott in the fourth round. Even his other quality finds in Brunell and Hasselbeck were fifth and sixth rounders respectively. What he's saying is there is no magic formula to finding a great quarterback. Basically a team must do their evaluations, make the judgment call and hope they get lucky. Often the best way to find the good ones is to draft the position as often as possible until the solution is found. This is a key part of the approach that Bears GMs have said they wish to do but to date have decidedly ignored. When Wolf was in charge between 1991 and 2001, a span of 11 seasons, the Packers drafted seven quarterbacks. Over the past 11 seasons for Chicago from 2006 to 2016, they have drafted three quarterbacks. It's little wonder they've had so little success. Before anybody argues that they had Jay Cutler for a large chunk of that time, Wolf had a counter for that too.
"In acquiring extra arms—among them Ty Detmer (1992 ninth round), Mark Brunell (’93 fifth round), Matt Hasselbeck (’98 sixth round) and Aaron Brooks (’99 fourth round), all of whom became starters for other teams—Wolf says he was bringing in players to challenge Favre."This is another lesson Wolf's disciples have learned well. His replacement, Ted Thompson, drafted Aaron Rodgers in 2005. One would think that's enough. Instead he's brought in five more quarterbacks since then. That includes a second round pick in Brian Brohm in 2008. Thompson, like Wolf, wants his stars playing but he doesn't want them comfortable. Reggie McKenzie landed Derek Carr with the Oakland Raiders in 2014. Two years later he spent a fourth round pick on Connor Cook out of Michigan State. Carr responded with the best season of his career and got the Raiders to the playoffs for the first time in 14 years. [video width="854" height="480" mp4="https://www.sportsmockery.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Derek-Carr-Throws-for-Over-500-Yards-Raiders-vs.-Buccaneers-NFL-Week-8-Player-Highlights.mp4"][/video] The point of it all being this. These draft experts can all say that there is no great quarterback in this 2017 NFL draft. It's a weak class. Blah, blah, blah. The bottom line is they don't know anything. Not for certain. They can do all the homework in the world but at the end of the day the Chicago Bears won't know if they've gotten their guy until they draft him. The only way they'll know for sure is to keep doing that until they find him.
