Bears Last To Smell What Stinks

While not admitting that everyone else was right the press, the fans, the folks in Seattle, migrants, vagrants and chiropodists the Bears cried “uncle” in the matter of Rick Mirer, both the worst idea and the worst quarterback the Bears have ever had.

“It was unanimous,” said Dave Wannstedt, bearing the news Monday.

Wannstedt was referring to himself and others with a stake in the decision, none of them Mirer. That would be Mike McCaskey, Mark Hatley and Ted Phillips, the usual suspects, the usual truants when blame is to be taken.

If this group had the least bit of starch in its spine, the bunch of them would have been shoulder to shoulder with Wannstedt agreeing that they all botched this one, and more so, that if they had just let Wannstedt coach, the Bears would be 3-3, no worse, right now.

I say if Kramer is not lifted against Detroit, if he starts in Dallas and against the Saints, the Bears win all three.

There Wannstedt was, the 0-6 coach in October, admitting that Erik Kramer gives the Bears the best chance to beat Green Bay, his August position.

“Rick is not where he needs to be,” Wannstedt said.

Mirer is still on the team. Where he needs to be is in Barcelona. He could be big in Barcelona, or maybe in the Arena League. O, Canada. Anywhere but here.

There can be no doubt that this is the end of Mirer as a Bear, that after Kramer, Steve Stenstrom is next, that anyone with eyes could see all that needed to be seen in the first half against New Orleans.

Mirer is to quarterbacking what nose hair is to coleslaw.

The question is how this man could ever have impressed anyone enough to have been given a job in the first place.

“The guy’s got talent,” Wannstedt said. “Everything you could say now would be negative.”

Not negative. Honest. Accurate. Proper. Trite. And about time.

None of this means that the Bears will win a football game. It is still possible to lose them all. In fact, it is desirable for the Bears to lose them all, given the system of rewards in the National Football League.

“This is not a give-up situation,” Wannstedt said. If it were, Mirer would still be the QB. Wannstedt is actually trying to save the season.

The Bears could have traded Kramer, still could, technically, by the end of the day. That would have been the way to take the season out of Wannstedt’s hands. With no Kramer, Mirer has to play.

Maybe with no Kramer, Mirer would be a better quarterback. Yeah, and with no trunk an elephant is a cocker spaniel.

Whatever else makes sense, whatever would be best for the future, Wannstedt is playing them one loss at a time.

“I’m the one who has got to go in there and face the players,” Wannstedt said.

Here is a man trying not to hang on to his job as much as trying to hang on to his team, a team that may or may not care. In private, or in another life, Wannstedt might apologize for wasting so much of their time accommodating Mirer.

“The quarterback is a position that affects the whole team. I’ve got to give these guys the best chance to win the next 10 games,” Wannstedt said, getting as close to regret as he is likely to.

Things have regressed so much that Wannstedt admitted that offensive coordinator Matt Cavanaugh now is unable to call plays that he was calling in training camp.

It was not that in Mirer the Bears had to try to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, it was that Mirer was not even a good sow’s ear.

Somebody besides the rest of us should have noticed. The most disturbing part about the whole Mirer episode is if the Bears can be so wrong about the most important and most easily measured position on the football team, how far wrong must they be about the rest of the players?

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Bernie Lincicome Chicago Tribune