Rachel Mitchell picked up the phone the other day in Jacksonville, N.C., and called to check on her baby boy. Her 355-pound baby boy.
“My mom said, `Baby, now if you get too hot, you better go in and lay down,”‘ Bears left tackle Qasim Mitchell said, chuckling. “I said, `Mom, I don’t think it’s going to work that way.’ Then she said, `Don’t think I won’t come up there and make sure you don’t overdo it.’ I said, `No, Mama, I think I can handle it.”‘
Like Mrs. Mitchell, coach Lovie Smith worries how well Mitchell will handle the heat in training camp. But it has nothing to do with the thermometer.
Whether Mitchell wilts under the pressure of being the No. 1 left tackle rates as the most pressing, pivotal issue of training camp for the Bears’ offense.
The Bears would prefer keeping John Tait at right tackle instead of left tackle because that’s what Tait prefers, even though the unselfish free agent remains open to switching sides if it’s done soon.
But the Bears won’t hesitate to start Aaron Gibson at right tackle and flip Tait if Mitchell falters. So in Mitchell’s massive hands rests the fate of three players.
“I feel the pressure, oh, yeah,” Mitchell admitted. “I’m sure I’m going to be standing on the sidelines and get yelled at even for stuff I didn’t even do. How you handle it describes what type of player you are. Right now, they’re like, `OK, we know he can play, but how will he do when we turn up the heat?”‘
The last time football created this much stress for Mitchell might have been two summers ago at the Cleveland Browns’ training camp after doctors stuck a tube in his chest so he could breathe. His right lung had collapsed when his rib cage nicked it after a hard hit. Mitchell continued to practice, unable to know the extent of the damage until a chest X-ray later revealed the hole.
“Doctors said it was like a one-in-a-million case,” Mitchell said. “It sounds a whole lot worse than it was.”
It was bad enough for Mitchell that the Browns placed him on injured reserve for his entire rookie season. He returned last summer penciled as a starter at right guard, but lost his job during camp and eventually was released last September. He blames his downfall on a shift in coach Butch Davis’ philosophy.
“At first, he wanted big, powerful offensive linemen, which would be myself. Then all of a sudden he wanted smaller guys who could play every position and he thought I could only play right guard,” Mitchell said. “I was expendable.”
The Bears took a chance on a raw talent so accomplished at North Carolina A&T that he considers himself the third-most famous football player to come out of his hometown behind Notre Dame coach Tyrone Willingham and former NFL linebacker Marcus Jones.
“That’s not bad company, is it?” Mitchell asked with a knowing smile.
Folks back in Jacksonville, N.C., have had high hopes for Mitchell since he was too big to play in the local peewee football league. By the 7th grade, he already stood 6 feet 1 inch, weighed 275 pounds and had high school coaches drooling. Despite his size, Mitchell developed nimble enough footwork that he lined up every now and then at fullback and ran a play called “Q Special.”
Major colleges stopped by Mitchell’s high school, but left quickly when they saw his academic transcript.
“I didn’t know anything about the SAT until three weeks before I had to take it,” Mitchell said. “So I had to go to somewhere I could get in.”
Now, Mitchell is smart enough to realize how much importance the job of left tackle holds in the Bears’ season. The only thing more important than protecting quarterback Rex Grossman’s blind side might be repairing Brian Urlacher’s hamstring, and even that would make a good debate.
With speed rushers typically lined up at right defensive end, a left tackle requires quicker feet than a right tackle, a longer reach and a shorter memory. Once beaten, a left tackle cannot be twice shy.
“It’s all about concentration, especially when you get tired,” Mitchell said. “Because if you get tired and think, `Oh, I don’t feel like doing it,’ the next thing you know Rex is going to be on a cart going off the field [with an injury].”
Grossman, whose instincts in the pocket should help Mitchell, doesn’t sound worried.
“I usually can see what’s going on over there anyway,” Grossman said of his blind side. “I think we have a great potential left tackle in `Q.”‘
