Brian Griese saw no unhappy faces. He wasn’t met by a firing squad of questions. He didn’t need to defend his own play or that of his team.
“See what a win does?” he asked.
Everybody around the Bears was able to exhale thanks to Sunday night’s 27-20 season-saver in Green Bay.
Like when linebacker Hunter Hillenmeyer was asked if the team’s entire season had been on the brink.
“I would like to not think it was that bleak,” Hillenmeyer said. “But probably.”
There are reasons to be upbeat, including that the Bears have put 27 points on the board in each of Griese’s starts.
Rex Grossman’s weeks taking the snaps produced 3, 20 and 10.
“It’s not like our offense is fixed,” Griese cautioned before Wednesday’s practice, but at least no one had to bug coach Lovie Smith by asking who his quarterback is.
By a statistical anomaly, Griese and Grossman each have passed for 500 yards on the nose.
Griese has more completions and more touchdown passes in one fewer start. His air yardage per game (250) is only slightly lower than Peyton Manning’s (263.8) and ranks ninth in the NFL, ahead of the likes of Donovan McNabb, Drew Brees, Philip Rivers and many more.
This is despite the fact Griese hadn’t started an NFL game since the sixth week of Tampa Bay’s season in 2005.
His coach was relieved to detect no rust.
“Maybe it’s like riding a bike,” Smith said. “You never forget how, but you do get better every time you pedal.”
And he had to pedal on the road. Griese’s first two starts as a Bear were on fields where a visiting quarterback barely could hear his own voice.
Griese now is getting ready to start a game at Soldier Field, and guess what?
He never has.
Not merely for the Bears — for anybody.
Sunday’s game with the Vikings is to be Griese’s 75th start in the NFL, but it will be the 32-year-old’s first in the ancient amphitheater by the lake.
If the offense is introduced when the inflatable Bear is blown up, Griese finally will get to spill from its mouth.
Denver didn’t play the Bears during Griese’s seasons there from 1998 to 2002. Miami and Tampa Bay made no visit to Chicago in his three years with those teams.
“I like playing on the road,” Griese said.
That didn’t mean he prefers it.
Elaborating that he enjoyed the “unique challenge” of playing in places like Lambeau Field in Green Bay, the quarterback said he didn’t mind dealing with adversity and noise.
On the contrary, Griese said, “I kind of relish those situations.”
Certain predecessors of his with the Bears relished being away from home at times because it enabled them to escape the aggravation of their own fans booing them.
Grossman went from the Super Bowl to the bench, three weeks into the next season.
“That’s why the NFL stands for Not For Long,” Vikings coach Brad Childress said.
Childress grew up in Aurora and later attended Eastern Illinois. He spent seven seasons on the Philadelphia Eagles’ staff before becoming Minnesota’s head coach. In Philly he served as quarterbacks coach and later offensive coordinator.
“With a lot of teams the quarterback position is a year-to-year thing or even week-to-week,” Childress said. “I know in Philadelphia for a while it was series-to-series.”
An oft-repeated overview of Griese is that he is a “Band-Aid” for the Bears, a short-term fix.
Don’t be too sure. Griese at 32 is only a year older than Manning is, two years older than Tom Brady is.
Vinny Testaverde, 44 next month, signed Wednesday to quarterback the Carolina Panthers. So it isn’t as if Griese has a foot in the NFL grave.
That victory in Green Bay spared the Bears another week of wondering what else could go wrong.
“Just to win a game that it looked like we had no business winning, that was huge,” Hillenmeyer said. “It seemed for a while like the harder we worked, the worse things got.”
“From the morale aspect,” tackle Tommie Harris said, “we needed that. It lifted everybody’s spirits.”
Griese went into the fourth quarter trailing and could have emerged winless in his two starts. Instead, he threw a touchdown pass and revived the Bears’ hopes.
“As an offense, we’re not where we want to be yet, clearly,” he said.
But at least they will hear cheers Sunday if he and the offense do get to run out of the inflatable Bear’s mouth.
———-
mikedowney@tribune.com
