With the football season over for the Bears, it’s wrestling season for general manager Jerry Angelo. The Bears are grappling with many problems, starting with one too familiar to both the franchise and Angelo: quarterback.
At the moment, Angelo concedes the obvious: with injured Jim Miller and Chris Chandler, and unproven Henry Burris, the Bears don’t have one.
“We’re not counting on any of our quarterbacks for the ’03 season,” Angelo said Tuesday. “They’ve all had major durability concerns and we’d be foolish to think we can count on them for the ’03 season.”
That means new quarterbacks, plural, will arrive at Bear headquarters through the draft and free agency, maybe even a trade.
Angelo said there are “six good [rookie] prospects this year” at quarterback, but he doesn’t know yet whether any of them are “special” enough to warrant the fourth pick in the April draft.
“I feel the first day we can get a good prospect,” he said, referring to day one of the draft.
Heisman Trophy winner Carson Palmer, Louisville’s Dave Ragone, Texas’ Chris Simms, and Cal’s Kyle Boller are at the Senior Bowl, and so are Texas Tech’s Kliff Kingsbury and Iowa State’s Seneca Wallace. Marshall’s Byron Leftwich is recovering from a sore leg. Florida’s Rex Grossman is an underclassman. On Tuesday, Mississippi’s Eli Manning announced he was staying in school.
The most familiar name among free agents is Arizona’s Jake Plummer; the most intriguing is New Orleans’ underused Jake Delhomme. There also will be those cut for salary purposes, such as Pittsburgh’s Kordell Stewart.
The Bears interviewed Simms on Monday.
“Needs work on fundamentals, mechanics, but what a great kid. And he has been in the fishbowl at Texas. He already has gone through that,” Angelo said, knowing the entire Bears’ organization will be playing in one in 2003.
