By Bob Markus

Through the years, the Chicago Bears have been primarily known for two things--Hall of Fame linebackers and Hall-of-Shame quarterbacks. Oh, you can throw in an occasional Gale Sayers or Walter Payton, but by and large the Bears have been defined by the stellar play of, especially, their middle linebackers and the cellar play of the myriad of mopes who have taken center snaps. This was the year that would change all that, or at least half of that. Brian Urlacher would continue on as the latest in the long orange and blue line of dynamic middle linebackers, a line that stretches all the way back to Bulldog Turner, who strictly speaking was not a middle linebacker--the position had yet to be invented--but a center and middle guard. Turner handed the mantle to Bill George, who DID invent the position of middle linebacker and from there it passed through the brutish hands of Dick Butkus to the fierce-eyed Mike Singletary to Urlacher, who seems almost certain to join his predecessors in the Hall of Fame.

But, no longer would Bears fans have to watch in despair as their rag-armed quarterbacks threw more passes into the dirt or, worse, into the arms of opposing defensive backs than they did to their own receivers. Riding to the rescue like El Cid, to right all of history's wrongs was Jay Cutler, who bore the impressive label "franchise quarterback." Unfortunately, what we got was not El Cid, but Sancho Panza. He even looks a bit like the popular conception of Don Quixote's sidekick, moonfaced with a slightly rounded body.

I don't know what I expected from Cutler's debut as a Bears quarterback, but certainly not this. Not four interceptions, two of which contributed directly to the Green Bay Packers' 21-15 opening night victory. Most of the picks were about as close to the intended receiver as Rush Limbaugh is to Barack Obama. If you could even figure out just who was the intended receiver. There was less communication between Cutler and his wideouts than there was between King Kong and Fay Wray.

But Cutler's performance was not the worst thing that happened to the Bears Monday night. Perhaps it was an anomaly and Cutler would come back next week to carve up the Pittsburgh Steelers. Wait a minute. Did I just say the Pittsburgh Steelers? Aren't they the Super bowl champions? Doesn't matter. Even if Cutler were the second coming of Sid Luckman the Bears aren't going anywhere without Urlacher. And Urlacher isn't going anywhere near a football field for the rest of this season after surgery for a dislocated wrist. Speaking of Luckman, Sid was one of only three quarterbacks who have led the Bears to a championship in the modern era, which he himself inaugurated in 1940 as the NFL's first T-formation quarterback. Luckman won four titles with the Bears, Bill Wade and Jim McMahon one apiece. Wade, like Cutler, went to Vanderbilt, so perhaps there is an omen there. But if Cutler can't cut it, perhaps the Bears could draft BYU's Max Hall next year. After all, McMahon is a BYU product. I doubt there will be any help forthcoming from Columbia, Luckman's alma mater.

There has been an endless string of Bears quarterbacks between Luckman and Cutler, most of them easily forgettable. But not all. There were the three B's--Ed Brown, George Blanda and Zeke Bratkowski. Brown led the Bears into the 1956 title game, Blanda became one of the game's alltime leading kickers and, in his football dotage, the starting quarterback for an Oakland Raiders team that nearly got to the Super Bowl. There were the three L's--Luckman, Bobby Layne, and Johnny Lujack. Luckman you already know about, although you might not know he was one of the nicest men who ever lived. I once asked him for an interview for a free lance piece I was working on. He invited me to his downtown Chicago apartment for breakfast, gave me a great interview and then thanked me for coming. Unaware of what he had in Layne, George Halas traded him and watched the eccentric Texan become a Hall of Famer for the Detroit Lions. Lujack, a two-way player, gave the Bears three decent years and then retired.

Later there were the likes of Jack Concannon, Bobby Douglass, Virgil Carter, and Bob Avellini. The first three were key figures in the most bizarre locker room scene I have ever witnessed. The Bears were nearing the end of their most disastrous season ever, a season in which they would go 1-13 and Brian Piccolo would be diagnosed with cancer. Carter, a record-setting passer at Brigham Young had been given his first start of the season, but at halftime, with the Bears down 3-0 to the Packers, Coach Jim Dooley replaced Carter with Douglass, then a rookie. I don't remember the score, but the Packers won easily enough and the Bears locker room was like a three-ringed circus. In one corner sat Douglass, telling anyone who would listen that he was the quarterback of the future. In another corner sat Concannon, who had not played, laughing and goading Carter, who was standing in the center of the room in a white hot rage and insisting he had played his last game as a Bear and would play out his option. "What if Halas won't let you do that?" I asked him. "I hope he won't be chickenshit enough to do that," Virgil responded in what became infamous as "the chicken bleep speech." Halas fined him a substantial amount and when I asked why, the owner-coach responded, "because he called me chickenshit." I pointed out that what Carter had said was he hoped Halas wouldn't be chickenshit, but the fine stood. Carter went on to lead the Cincinnati Bengals to the playoffs the next season and later returned to Chicago as the quarterback of the short-lived Chicago Fire.. My wife and I were socially acquainted with Virgil and his wife, Judy. We always thought they were the perfect couple, he the star quarterback, she a cheerleader at BYU. So we were stunned a few years later when we heard that the two were divorced. I lost track of him after that, but finally decided to find out what had become of him. I called Lavell Edwards, his coach at BYU, and Lavell said that the last he'd heard, Virgil had become part of a motorcycle gang. He gave me a phone number where Carter could sometimes be reached, but I never tried to call him.

Douglass was totally miscast as a quarterback. He had an arm like a bazooka and was a powerful runner. He could have become another Paul Horning had he been switched to tailback, but it never happened. After his football career ended, Douglass tried to become a baseball pitcher and was given a tryout by the White Sox's Iowa farm team. I went to Des Moines to cover the event. All I remember about it was that Bobby was wild and I had a nice conversation with the Iowa manager, a guy named Tony LaRussa.

The quarterbacks came and went. Mike Phipps, Vince Evans, Avellini, then, finally, McMahon. But the euphoria that McMahon helped bring to Chicago didn't last long, and the qbs kept coming. Doug Flutie and Mike Tomczak and Jim Harbaugh and Erik Kramer, and Steve Walsh and Shane Matthews and Cade McCown and on and on and on. Finally there was Rex Grossman, who got credit for getting the Bears to the Super Bowl a few years back, although it was the defense and Devin Hester who really were responsible.

Jay Cutler may be a cut above many of the signal callers who passed through Chcicago over the past 50 years, but he sure didn't show it in the opener. Now, with Urlacher down, the very heart of the Bears' defense ripped out, it might take more than the second coming of Sid Luckman to save the Bears' season. It would take the second coming of you know who to do that.