Somewhere, Dusty Baker was cringing. In a move that must make no sense to the Cubs’ clueless manager, Chicago Bears head coach Lovie Smith has decided that instead of sticking with a woefully unproductive veteran, he’s going to play the most talented guy, and use rookie Kyle Orton at quarterback.
Instead of forcing Orton to play Matt Murton or Ronny Cedeno to Chad Hutchinson’s Todd Hollandsworth or Neifi Perez, Lovie’s going with (gasp!) the best man for the job.
And with rumors flying that Todd Walker is about to be traded by the Cubs to the Cleveland Indians, his brother-in-law might be completely out of a job.
You wonder if Chad realized that when he lost the starting job, he most likely lost his entire job as well? After all, if he’s not good enough to start now, why would you keep him around. It’s a sad statement about Chad’s career that on a team with quarterback studs like Kurt Kittner and Jeff Blake (cough, cough, weeze, weeze), that the Bears are likely least comfortable with Chad.
Don’t be surprised if the final cut included Hutchinson and week one’s depth chart at QB has Orton starting, backed up by Blake, with Kittner named the “emergency” quarterback, and Chad back home in California, where he was exactly a year ago, hoping the phone will ring.
Hutchinson’s problems at QB are numerous. While he has the physical gifts for the position (6’5, 240 pounds, a cannon arm), he proved to be woefully indecisive during games. To be fair, he hasn’t played all that much quarterback. He only played two years in college, then went off to play baseball, then came back for a year in Dallas before he was on the street again. Last year he was “tutored” by Terry Shea (which is much like being taught algebra by Dexter Manley). All of that was evident in his play. He was mind-numbingly slow to make his progressions. By the time he decided where to pass, the receiver usually had a couple of buddies wearing different colored shirts, hanging out with them. It wasn’t going to happen for Chad.
He lost his job sometime in the second quarter on Friday night. Probably on an interception, but maybe even before that. Lovie Smith’s last straw snapped and when Kyle Orton jogged onto the field two possessions ahead of schedule in the third quarter it was over. It didn’t hurt that on his second possession, Orton snapped off several quick, decisive and accurate throws and the Bears marched down the field for a touchdown.
He’s a rookie and rookies make mistakes. But unless he develops some sort of mental retardation in the next couple weeks he won’t make as many mistakes as Hutchinson would have.
Orton’s ascension bring Muhsin Muhammad back to the Bears’ offense. He was going to be completely wasted with Hutchinson, and now has a chance to be relevant again.
Orton won’t be asked to win games by himself. His presence behind center should force teams to actually pay attention to the possiblility of an occassionally completed pass, and that should open things up for Thomas Jones and newly signed Cedric Benson.
The defense is positively studly, even with Hunter Hillenmeyer at one of the outside linebacker spots.
How impressive was a third and short on Friday night, when Ron Rivera, knowing the Bills like to run to their right, re-aligned his linebackers, moving Hillenmeyer inside and Urlacher to the outside just before the snap? Hillenmeyer crashed the center of the line and Urlacher stormed off the edge to claw, stun and eat Willis McGahee.
It prompted Mike Ditka to observe, “There are some people who say Urlacher is overrated. Those people are stupid.”
As mentioned above, the Cedric Benson hostage crisis is over. It ended on Sunday when the Bears cut Cedric a very large check and he untied himself and left his hotel room. This is important, for this reason. Thomas Jones is a talented running back, and he’s scheduled to pull a hamstring in week three. So it’s good to have Benson around so he’ll be ready to take over for Thomas at that point. It also allows the Bears to trade Adrian Peterson to a team like the Steelers or Eagles who are running one RB short these days. Peterson’s a nice player who runs with the kind of body lean that causes opposing linebackers to moan “Oh, this is going to hurt” just before they tackle him.
How far can the Bears go with a pair of rookies leading the way on offense? Who knows. All we do know is that Orton, especially, will give the Bears a chance to win, instead of Hutchinson who would have spent every Sunday trying to sabotage his own defense.
