Good Rex, Bad Rex, and the Chicago Bears

Team Heads into the NFC Playoffs Unsure of Which Rex Grossman Will Show Up at QB

"We'll never make it," Chicago Bears fans can be heard doing their best collective Glum. "Weeeeee're doooooooooomed." Doomed in the upcoming NFC playoffs, that is.

You wouldn't know it from such a pessimistic tone but last Sunday this team wrapped up one of the better regular seasons in Chicago Bears history. A 13-3 record. A first round bye with home field advantage throughout the playoffs. Seven Pro Bowlers. A legitimate Rookie of the Year candidate. The first Bear running back since Neal Anderson in 1989 and 1990 to post back-to-back 1,000-plus yard rushing seasons. The first Bear quarterback since Eric Kramer in 1997 to pass for 3,000-plus yards in a single season. And, considering that injury-prone Rex Grossman, the QB in question, actually started all 16 games without so much as a minor muscle strain (while setting a Chicago Bears single-season record of seven games at a 100-plus passer rating), all this gloom and doom might seem just a little bit misplaced. Indeed, Chicago Bears fans ought to be outright happy, right?

Wrong.

Momentum, that all-important intangible for so many gridiron analysts, is in scarce supply for the NFC playoff-bound Chicago Bears. The Monsters of the Midway, with quarterback Rex Grossman at the helm, are limping into the 2006 postseason as perhaps the worst 13-3 team in NFL history. After eking out narrow victories against the lowly Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the even lowlier Detroit Lions in weeks 15 and 16, respectively, the Bears followed up with an abysmal 26-7 loss to their archrival Green Bay Packers in the season finale.

Embarrassing.