You don’t interrupt a person at the craps table to ask him about the roll he’s on, and this week anyway, you don’t ask Erik Kramer about his last two games.
“Nope, I can’t explain it,” he said, then smiled. “Don’t want to.”
If it is to continue Sunday at Arizona, Kramer will have to survive the rush of one of the most talented defensive lines in the league. He will also have to prove he is not merely on a hot streak but legitimately on his way to the kind of numbers he accumulated in 1995, the best year of his pro career and the last time he played all season without missing a snap.
“I feel I’m playing the best I ever have consistently and I’m excited because I think we can do some good things,” Kramer said. “Across the board, I think we’re better than we were that year.”
He certainly has demonstrated that recently. Against Minnesota two weeks ago, Kramer threw for a career-high 372 yards and four touchdowns in a 31-28 loss. His passing yardage is the fourth-highest single-game total in franchise history.
Last Sunday, in rallying the Bears to a 21-point fourth-quarter comeback against Detroit for their first victory of the season, Kramer completed a season-high 26 passes in 37 attempts for 275 yards and two touchdowns, adding his first rushing touchdown of the season.
That outing improved Kramer’s passer rating to 92.3, good enough for third best in the NFC and a tie for seventh in the NFL.
“I just feel real good throwing the ball right now,” Kramer said. “Now I can’t wait to get back out there and not have all the fumbles to overcome.”
Kramer’s fourth-quarter heroics, which overcame a five-fumble day by the Bears, resurrected memories of ’95: specifically, two come-from-behind victories that season against Carolina and Houston. Since then, one season was lost to injury and another to Rick Mirer, against a backdrop of questions about Kramer’s ability to do anything more than put his team in position to win.
“I don’t mind having the responsibility of coming up and making plays and being responsible for getting this offense rolling,” Kramer said. “It’s not solely my job because everybody has to make plays, but it’s my job to get us in some good situations and it feels gratifying when it happens.
“We’ve been in that situation before, but you have to keep reassuring yourself you can do it.”
And you have to keep doing it to make anyone believe that even after nine NFL seasons, you’re for real. In 1995 Kramer was validated by a career year in which he set Bears single-season records with 522 attempts, 315 completions, 3,838 yards and 29 touchdowns.
Guard Todd Perry, part of a line that has allowed just four sacks in five games, said he has been reminded these last two weeks of ’95, when Kramer was sacked only 15 times all season.
“You can look in Erik’s eyes and see the confidence he’s playing with,” Perry said. “When Erik gets hot, he’s unstoppable.”
When he was with the Lions in ’91, Kramer rallied a club that finished 6-10 the year before to a berth in the NFC championship game, winning the last six games of the regular season. He has been the Bears’ opening-day starter the last five years, but they have yet to make the playoffs under his command.
Last off-season, Kramer flirted with the San Diego Chargers before finally signing a three-year, $9 million deal with the Bears, saying he “fantasized” about playing out his career in Chicago.
First he had to establish he was the quarterback after riding the Mirer-Dave Wannstedt roller-coaster last season.
“It’s tough to be playing that position and be looking over your shoulder,” receiver Bobby Engram said. “When you’re supposed to be the leader of the team, guys are going to look for you to be in there week in and week out and that’s what he is now. He’s the guy and we’ve known all along he was our guy, so we feel good about him being in there and I’m sure he feels more stable.”
Nevertheless, popular opinion has it that if the Bears can corral one of six top college quarterbacks in next year’s NFL draft, Kramer’s days as a starter are numbered and that at most, he would start one more season as a mentor.
“That’s probably the furthest thing from our mind and the furthest thing from his mind right now,” Wannstedt said. “When we signed him back, we thought he could help the team win and help the team win now and that’s why we did it. It’s very simple.”
In the Bears’ first three games this season, Kramer had just one touchdown pass, did not throw for more than 194 yards and threw a rally-stopping interception at Pittsburgh. He also threw another interception at the goal line against the Vikings to kill a potential scoring drive with the Bears leading 21-17 late in the third quarter.
“A lot of it has to do with the way the whole offense is playing,” Perry said of Kramer’s streakiness. “It’s tough for anyone to get in a rhythm when guys are getting hurt up front and you’re not getting protection. But as we protect him, he’s able to stand back there with confidence and make the throws. And as he makes the throws, it makes our job easier, so it’s a full-circle deal.”
Against Arizona, Kramer will have to contend with a defensive line that includes Simeon Rice, Andre Wadsworth and Eric Swann, who personally annihilated the Bears’ offensive line in the preseason but is questionable for Sunday’s game because of sore knees.
Wannstedt said Kramer, who will have Curtis Conway back in his arsenal after a 1 1/2-game absence, is underrated as a playground-type player.
“I think he’s a tougher guy than people give him credit for,” Wannstedt said. “Because he’s not screaming the whole time on the field or saying a lot after, people might not realize it, but he’s more of a football guy than you might think.
“For him to go out and throw three or four touchdown passes, it doesn’t surprise me and it doesn’t surprise Erik because he has the ability to do that. But like any quarterback, everything else needs to be working right.”
If that happens, Kramer might even want to talk about it.
