Rex Grossman was the first Bears player to leave the locker room after halftime of last month’s game against Atlanta. Seeing him run out onto the field ahead of his teammates piqued the interest of the fans in Soldier Field, and when he began to warm up they went wild. Other Bears emerged to find the crowd in an uproar and Grossman getting ready–it was as if he’d sneaked out without telling them he was going to start the second half–and they got excited too. Then the rest of the team came dashing out, and in the moments before the kickoff the players and the fans were all jumping up and down and screaming with anticipation.
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That’s not to diminish what Orton achieved after Grossman went down with a broken ankle in an exhibition game. As a rookie quarterback, he’d been asked to avoid mistakes and play well enough to give the Bears’ dominating defense a chance to win. Aside from a miserable game against the Cincinnati Bengals in which he threw five interceptions, that’s exactly what he did, and there was a stretch of eight straight victories. But if Orton’s performance made the Bears contenders for the Super Bowl, it didn’t necessarily make them Super Bowl contenders. Like major league baseball at the moment, the National Football League finds itself imbalanced, with one conference far stronger than the other. Behind a stern defense and a one-dimensional, run-oriented offense based on Thomas Jones, the Bears could hope to knock off even the Seattle Seahawks and make it to Super Bowl XL. But then they’d face certain annihilation at the hands of the Indianapolis Colts, or the AFC team scrappy and lucky enough to beat the Colts. Most of the AFC playoff teams would be favored in the Super Bowl whomever they meet, including the Seahawks. The Super Bowl is going the way of the World Series, in which the last two National League champions were swept by vastly superior American League teams.
It was also the way coach Lovie Smith made the change. There’s a truism in football that fans always find fault with the quarterback and root for the backup to go in, but once the change is made are soon clamoring for the original starter. Bears fans certainly rooted for Grossman, especially as Orton’s struggles worsened over the season. But there were some in the stands and in the media who insisted Smith couldn’t make a change, even with Grossman healed, as long as the Bears were winning. What Smith eventually did confounded both sides. He didn’t change quarterbacks while Orton won, but neither did he make a desperation move when Orton lost. He switched quarterbacks from a position of relative strength, with the Bears ahead 6-3 midway through the Falcons game. TV commentator Joe Theisman was highly critical, but he ate his words when the Bears opened up behind Grossman like a blossoming flower. Local media “experts” humiliated themselves as well, notably the Tribune’s Mike Downey, who flip-flopped on whether Grossman should have replaced Orton and then wrote more columns ineffectually trying to explain himself.
