The Bears and their quarterbacks

[lastcat3]

Was watching undisputed videos off of youtube (don't necessarily agree with all they say but Skip and Shannon are entertaining characters to watch) and Skip brought up that the Bears havn't had a truly solid quarterback situation since Sid Luckman. And when you think about it there is a lot of truth to that.

So when you have quarterback issues throughout a good portion of the franchises existence it goes deeper than just head coaches and GM's. Could the Halas family be a reason why the Bears have seemingly always had trouble at quarterback?

[RRMarshall]

They did win a title with Billy Wade at QB who was perhaps underrated during his time. No denying the long string of mediocre talent at QB since Luckman, but could part of that be development, too? Didn't they have some guy named Blanda they discarded in the 50's? I seem to remember he went on to have a pretty good career

[7DnBrnc53]

They also had Bobby Layne as well.

[Rupert Patrick]

Was watching undisputed videos off of youtube (don't necessarily agree with all they say but Skip and Shannon are entertaining characters to watch) and Skip brought up that the Bears havn't had a truly solid quarterback situation since Sid Luckman. And when you think about it there is a lot of truth to that.

So when you have quarterback issues throughout a good portion of the franchises existence it goes deeper than just head coaches and GM's. Could the Halas family be a reason why the Bears have seemingly always had trouble at quarterback?

If it's anything, it's a systemic history of bad drafting when it comes to the QB position. If the Bears had drafted Dan Marino or Fran Tarkenton or Joe Montana or Ken Anderson, any one of them would have solved their QB problems for 15 years or so. Yet, they passed on every one of them and many others just like them in the various drafts.

The Bears have a great history, but a lot of it is, history. The Bears franchise W-L record (since 1933) in regular season games is 653-542-16, which is a percentage of .5458 if you split the ties. One way of looking at their history is by looking at their future history; what I mean is, what is their franchise W-L record from 2000 to 2018, or from 1950 to 2018? When you start to look at the Bears in that way, you see that they have been a rather mediocre franchise for the past 60 years. I did that for the Bears franchise history, listing their W-L record for each season from 1933 to 2018, and their future franchise W-L record from that season to 2018.

In 1933, they started at 653-542-16, or .5448, from 1933 to 2018, and it started going downhill from there. From 1934-2018, (in other words, removing the 1933 W-L record from their history), they were down to 630-540-15, or .5380, and it kept slowly going downhill from there. In 1956, despite the fact they went to the NFL Championship Game, the Bears future W-L record from 1956-2018 dropped below .500, to 462-465-7. Their franchise winning percentage between the season in question and 2018 has been under .500 for most of the time since except for the Payton years, when it went just over .500 due to shedding the weight of their really bad years in the late 1960's and early 1970's, and again in 2016 and 2017 based on the weight of their 12-4 2018 season.

Between 1933-56, the Bears had a record of 191-77-9, a .7058 winning percentage. Since then, they've been barely below .500.

[sheajets]

Cutler stabilized the position. He was their guy and they went all in on him. Now he didn't necessarily perform and develop into the QB people had hoped he'd be but he wasn't piss poor. The QB position for them was settled and stable from 2009 to 2015

[BD Sullivan]

Here's a list of the QB's they've drafted over the years:

https://www.pro-football-reference.com/ ... by=default

Interestingly, from 1952-81 (30 years), they didn;t draft any QB's in the first round.

[JeffreyMiller]

Was Jim McMahon really that bad?

[lastcat3]

Was Jim McMahon really that bad?

Generally the knock on Mcmahon was that he could never stay healthy. If you are one that likes to go back and watch old games on youtube from the Mcmahon era there are probably just as many games up in which he wasn't playing as there are in which he was.

[JohnH19]

Was Jim McMahon really that bad?

As you know, he was quite good when he was healthy but he couldn't stay in one piece long enough to create a legacy for himself.

I thought Cutler would be the answer but that didn't work out. Wade had a pretty good run but it was brief. The Bears have also had some one year wonders like Rudy Bukich in 1965 and Erik Kramer in 1995.

Luckman is clearly the best they've ever had.

[74_75_78_79_]

Luckman IS obviously the best-ever-Bears QB! But McMahon has to be #2; if barring injuries, judging by his peak (his work with Philly, '91, should tell quite a tale as well).

McMahon and Namath similar - just one Ring each but so much more left on table that was never reached thanks to injuries. Both had swagger, leadership/huddle-presence, etc. They each had...'it'!