When the Bears drafted Cade McNown in 1999, I didn’t care.

But do you remember the first game of the 2000 season? Against a very good Vikings team, McNown opened 27-41-290-2 and 10 carries, 81 yards and a TD on the ground. From my lounger at the now defunct ESPN Zone in Times Square, I got excited.

When the Bears drafted Rex Grossman in 2003, I didn’t care.

Reverend Dave and I watched that selection, thoroughly intoxicated with some British Browns fans, at a sports pub in Piccadilly Circus. It was a surreal and hysterical experience, but nobody celebrated anything. Yet by early in the 2006 season, there were few doubting Rex could be a top player at the professional level. 

When the Bears drafted Mitch Trubisky in 2017, I didn’t care.

Well, I cared a little, as this was the first real scoop I had been given and was able to break on Twitter. I also won quite a bit of cash off the skeptical patrons of Mother Hubbard’s. (That ripped us off that night and I never returned.) I picked the Bears to go to the Super Bowl in 2019 specifically because of Mitch’s final drive against the Eagles in the Cody Parkey game; a drive I watched in the building. 

When the Bears drafted Justin Fields in 2021, I didn’t care.

While the Robert Mays’s of the world got giddy on their podcasts (why is he always so damn giggly), I hadn’t been impressed by the two college games I’d seen Fields play and saw no reason for ecstasy. But there were clearly moments in his tenure I found genuinely thrilling, most of which were documented on this site. Fields is not a bad quarterback. He’s a limited one. 

When the Bears take their next starting quarterback in April, I won’t care.

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2000 was one of the more forgettable seasons in Bears history. They lost their first five games. They went into the bye 1-7. They scored more than 16 points only twice in those games.

But this game was memorable to me for a few reasons.

• This was the first fall of my collegiate life and I watched this game at the ESPN Zone in Times Square. (Which, as far as theme restaurants go, was the best in NYC.) I had been watching Bears games, until that point, alone, in tiny sports bars in New Jersey, with illegal satellites picking up Chicago sports. Now the Bears were in front of me on a massive screen and there were Bears fans EVERYWHERE around me.
• It was impossible to watch this game and not think the Bears had a quarterback. Cade McNown was electric. Big arm. Accurate. And he used his legs to keep drives going and put points on the board. His final stat line 27-41, 290, 2 TDs, 0 INTs. Passer rating of 102.7. Two months later he was inactive. Four months later his career was over.
• It is still amazing to remember what Randy Moss did to the Bears consistently before the arrival of Charles Tillman. It’s item 1A when it comes to the Tillman Hall of Fame argument. (Item 1 is the punch.)

With the 12th pick in the 1999 NFL Draft, the Chicago Bears select Cade McNown, quarterback, UCLA.

QB rating through 25 total games with the franchise: 67.7.

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With the 22nd pick in the 2003 NFL Draft, the Chicago Bears select Rex Grossman, quarterback, Florida.

Best QB rating during his Bears tenure, 2006: 73.9.

__________

With their first-round picks in 2009 and 2010, the Chicago Bears trade for Jay Cutler, quarterback, Denver Broncos.

Number of seasons with a QB rating over 90: 1.

__________

With the second pick in the 2017 NFL Draft, the Chicago Bears select Mitchell Trubisky, quarterback, North Carolina.

QB rating ranking league-wide in 2019: 28th.

(This year he would be around 26th, only because Nick Foles is on the list.)

That’s it. That’s the post.