Friday, February 02, 2007
Locked and loaded
Quotes from Super Bowl preview articles:
1. "At times, Grossman been hot. More times, he's been cold."
-John Clayton
2. "Rex Grossman made some plays he had to make against the Saints, but I still think they're going to try and limit his throws. There's no way Chicago wants him throwing more than 25 times."
-Don Banks
3. "One of the uglier questions this week has been, "Is Grossman the worst ever Super Bowl QB?" It's unfair but he has himself to blame."
-Dr. Z
4. "I haven't talked to one person who thinks the Bears can win. Not one."
-Bill Simmons
Boy, it's hopeless being a Bears fan before they play the impenetrable, dominating machine that is the Indianapolis Colts. A team that stumbled into the playoffs. A team that lost to the Houston Texans. A team that allowed a historic number of rushing yards. A team missing its starting cornerback. I'm just glad that they're going to give the Bears the common courtesy of 60 full minutes on the field with this unbeatable juggernaut.
However, despite the dominance of the Colts, there are problems with those italicized statements.
1. This is flat-out wrong. Grossman has had 10 games this season with a QB rating above 80, and two more games in the 70s. That's 12 non-terrible games.
2. Of the Bears' 18 games this season, Grossman has thrown fewer than 25 times in just three of them.
3. Saying that it's unfair, but it's also Grossman's fault doesn't make any sense. It can't be unfair if it's his fault.
4. This is meaningless. The only people who will even talk to Bill anymore are House, Hench, J-Bug and his geriatric father.
Grossman lashed out yesterday -- finally -- by calling reporters "ignorant" for their constant badgering and criticism of him this week. He's clearly pissed off, and I don't see how he can be blamed for that; he's handled it a lot better than most people would have. Probably 70 percent of the questions asked of him have been about how bad of a quarterback he is. The other 30 percent of questions are about the questions he receives about how bad of a quarterback he is. Questions about how he's not Peyton Manning.
Peyton Manning is in his ninth year as an NFL quarterback. His first season's QB rating was 71.6 Grossman is in his first full season. His QB rating is 73.9. His record as a starter is 20-5.
20-5! It's nothing to sniff at. He's doing at least a few things right.
While I always root hard for the Bears, I'll be rooting especially hard for Rex on Sunday. I want him to blow the Colts out of the water, not just so the Bears win, but so everyone will finally get off his back. I want him to throw for 380 yards. I want him to toss four touchdowns. I want him to abuse Bob "Heart and Soul" Sanders in coverage.
I'm still not even sure that would make his doubters back off. But it won't matter, because the Bears will win the Super Bowl if that happens. And while respect is nice, the Bears probably won't get it no matter what they do.
So they'll just have to settle for a title. Ho hum. Something tells me they'll be just fine with that.
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Nicely done. Yes, it's an honor for the lowly Bears to even take the same field as the Colts. Grossman doesn't have much experience, but he haas more than Brady had the first go-around.
I'm with you, not too afraid of a team with terrible defense and special teams authoring a blowout, no matter what J-Bug the imaginary friend might think. Outdoors and a Bears crowd? Peyton, fire up the "I'm trying to be a good teammate, but it's everyone else's fault" speech. Go Bears.
Nice to hear from another Bears fan on here. JR is just a fan of men in general, not those that make up football teams.
Thanks for stopping by.
I haven't even read the damn thing yet, but I had to drop dap for the alt tag on that picture of Rex. "Yes. It's Peter King." Fantastic..
Now that I've read it all, bravo. The stats really do point to AT LEAST a competitive game, if not a Bears blow out. Not that stats are Iron Lock (TM) reasons to pick a game, but there's plenty of reasons to like the Bears here, and it befuddles me that so many "experts" are completely overlooking them.
The stats also show that Rex is a better than average QB with the potential to dazzle. But hell, if you'd watched any Bears football at all this season, you'd know that. Oh that's right, NFL columnists don't actually watch football anymore. Except Gregg Easterbrook.
I hate Gregg Easterbrook. I'll tackle him someday. Then I'll write a blog post about him.
Thanks folks, I'll be here all night! Enjoy the veal!
Also, just ran XLI through WhatIfSports another 12 times, with slight variances on wind, weather and temperature (all based on the actual forecast) ... Bears won all 12. I can't make the Colts win against the Bears at Dolphins Stadium.