Tuesday’s two-minute drill …
Now we can sense how frustrated Brian Griese must have felt watching.
How hard it must have been for Griese to hear time and again that he was the guy most equipped to manage a football game but not necessarily win it. How insulting it was to be referred to as an insurance policy.
Who knew?
Apparently he did. As Griese stood there Sunday explaining his game-winning, 97-yard touchdown drive like a surgeon describing the way he removed an appendix, not an iota of amazement showed.
Griese only enhanced his growing local legend as a football savant by referencing film study of how the Eagles had defended the Jets in a similar situation a week earlier helped him on the winning 15-yard TD pass. And how many postgame remarks from the locker room include a quarterback using “fortuitous,” the term Griese pulled out of his mental Thesaurus?
At this rate, Griese’s future news conferences will be televised on The NFL Network, Comcast SportsNet and the Learning Channel. At this rate, Griese will put himself in the Bears’ record books even after spending the first three games as Rex Grossman’s backup.
Granted, the pages of the Bears’ record book aren’t exactly tattered, but it reinforces that this quarterback switch is turning into quite the career renaissance for Griese.
In four starts, he has completed 102 of 163 passes for 1,203 yards, eight touchdowns and six interceptions for a passer rating of 86. Only one NFL starting quarterback has a higher yard-per-game average than Griese’s 300.8 and that’s the guy who couldn’t beat him out a decade ago at Michigan — New England’s Tom Brady.
Somewhere, Lloyd Carr is thinking about curling his lips into a smile.
It’s a blistering pace that projects Griese would finish the season with 332 completions in 530 attempts for 3,910 yards — totals in each category that would break Erik Kramer’s single-season team records set in 1995. If healthy, Griese is projected to throw 26 TDs and 20 interceptions.
The Bears need better offensive balance if they have any hope of either making the postseason or legitimately threatening a playoff team. But with a Bears running game stuck in neutral and Cedric Benson looking more ordinary by the series, Griese sticking near his statistical averages doesn’t seem far-fetched at all.
Yes, Griese makes smart decisions and good use of all his receivers. But most of all he has made plays clutch NFL quarterbacks need to make.
Besides putting the ball where it needed to be, Griese also showed a savvy veteran’s poise and experience eluding the Eagles’ omnipresent blitz, as when he stepped away from a blitzing Lito Sheppard in time to convert a key third-down pass.
That improvisational skill, frankly, has been the part of the package many of us didn’t expect when Griese replaced Grossman.
Yet not even the gunslinger mentality Grossman brought to the line of scrimmage ever produced a four-game stretch in 2006 as explosive as Griese’s. Grossman completed 78 of 125 passes for 1,061 yards eight TDs and three interceptions during his best four-game stretch of 2006 during the opening month when he was being mentioned as the league MVP. But he never posted back-to-back 300-yard games the way Griese just did.
Of course, the Bears didn’t need to rely on Grossman as heavily as they have needed to lean on Griese, which in some ways makes his 62.6 percent completion rate and overall efficiency even more impressive. …
One of the key defensive plays of Sunday’s game came early for the Bears and risked getting overlooked. On third-and-goal from the 6 late in the first quarter, rookie cornerback Trumaine McBride jarred loose a quick slant pattern from wide receiver Reggie Brown that would have been a touchdown. The Eagles had to settle for a 24-yard field goal. Overall, McBride represented himself well in his second NFL start. …
Here’s one way the rookie can improve based on Sunday’s videotape. When Brown executed two painful-looking, crack-back blocks on safety Adam Archuleta during Brian Westbrook runs, McBride has to do a better job of letting Archuleta know the receiver is coming. … As well as McBride played, the sight of injured cornerback Nathan Vasher backpedaling before the game should encourage the Bears. Vasher had been idle since injuring his groin against Dallas back during the Grossman era. With another game off followed by an off week, Vasher would give the defense a needed boost if he can return for the second-half run toward the playoffs. … The Bears could use “the Interceptor.” Sunday marked the first time in Lovie Smith’s tenure the Bears have gone back-to-back games without a takeaway. … Another defensive play that looks bigger now than it did at the time came from Archuleta. Archuleta’s sack for a 3-yard loss with 3 minutes 8 seconds left regained momentum for the Bears after Eagles QB Donovan McNabb had just scrambled to convert a third down. …
The Bears inadvertently may have helped their 2008 season as well as this one in beating the Eagles. Now 2-4, Philly began hearing calls Monday from a media curious to see what second-round draft pick Kevin Kolb has to offer as the supposed successor to McNabb. If that hastens McNabb’s exit from the place he said last week he envisions finishing his career, all the better for a Bears team that still should pursue McNabb in the off-season if he’s available. … One former NFL referee gave referee Ed Hochuli credit Monday for being “100 percent right” on the false-start penalty that saved the Bears from losing a fumble. “In order to have a legal snap, the ball has to touch the quarterback,” the official said. “If the ball touches the quarterback and goes to the ground, it’s a fumble. It’s the only fumble that occurs without possession preceding it.” The referee said he had only encountered a similar play one other time in more than two decades on the field. …
Muhsin Muhammad took pride in pointing out his role in helping Devin Hester get lined up Sunday. But the veteran’s lesson to Bernard Berrian could be more important, and as apparent, after the wide receivers watch the video. Muhammad not only caught the game-winning pass but also had a solid day blocking, especially on a side screen to Hester that went for 11 yards. Berrian looked reluctant when trying to block Omar Gaither before Gaither made the tackle on fullback Jason McKie’s reception that went to the 1 instead of for a touchdown. … This is the type of local angst the Bears avoided by winning: Monday’s lead column in the Philadelphia Inquirer said the Eagles’ loss was “the kind of game that will cause dyspepsia in fans for [years].” Dyspepsia sounds like a word Griese would use — but no longer cause.
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The hand you’re dealt
OK, he’s not Tom Brady or Peyton Manning. But through four starts, Brian Griese’s numbers compare favorably to the top quarterbacks in the NFC.
Brian Griese
(4 starts)
300.8 yards per game
62.6% completion rate
8 TDs, 6 INTs
86.0 Passer rating
Jeff Garcia
Tampa Bay (7 starts)
214.9 yards per game
70.4% completion rate
7 TDs, 0 INTs
106.2 Passer rating
Tony Romo
Dallas (7 starts)
283.4 yards per game
62.8% completion rate
16 TDs, 9 INTs
95.6 Passer rating
Brett Favre
Green Bay (6 starts)
285.8 yards per game
64.8% completion rate
9 TDs, 6 INTs
87.0 Passer rating
Eli Manning
New York Giants (7 starts)
217.9 yards per game
60.4% completion rate
13 TDs, 9 INTs
82.9 Passer rating
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dhaugh@tribune.com
