Rex Grossman's Critics Are Idiots

What does Troy Aikman, Steve Young, Joe Namath, Phil Simms, Terry Bradshaw, and Peyton Manning all have in common? Aside from being some of the all-time greats of the game ... they all performed worse than Rex Grossman in their first full season as starting quarterbacks.

Let me first begin by saying that I am not a sports writer. I don't give you that information as a disclaimer ... I'm telling you that with great pride. My gig is politics. I'm a number one rated talk show host in my market, former football player, former coach, former referee, and a Chicago Bears fanatic. No, I've never played, coached, or refereed at the professional level. Most sportswriters, pundits, and hosts should be hanging their heads in shame at how pathetically juvenile they have been this past year. In my career I live and die by facts ... clearly that is not the case for those in sports as this last season has shown.

I've always been a fan of Griese, and hoped Chicago would pick him up after he left Denver. The treatment he received from the Denver fans was clearly disgusting, and he would have been a great fit in Chicago but no such luck. Griese was having a pretty good preseason, and a quarterback controversy started. The idiot fans, and sportscasters who know nothing about how to run a team came out ignoring football history 101 and called for Griese to be the starting quarterback. Completely forgetting that quarterbacks often struggle in the preseason, and the team does not run its normal offense. Grossman's critics all ignored these facts as well as the other big name quarterbacks who were struggling in the preseason, and instead called for a new quarterback to run an offense that he didn't know.

Sure enough, my calls to give Grossman 3 games during the regular season running the real offense was proven correct. Grossman excelled far above the other quarterbacks in the league, and signs of apology to Rex started showing up in Soldier Field. Even I was amazed at how well he was doing for essentially a rookie quarterback with little on field experience. We all knew that he would have a bad day sooner or later ... all quarterbacks do. Grossman struggled against the Vikings, mainly due to bad play calling, but pulled it out with a game winning drive. True Bears fans started to notice a disturbing trend at about this time. There was a very evident shift from power running football to a pass first offense. Worse yet, we were able to predict the plays from our couches and bar stools as we watched the game. Message boards lit up with Bears fans concerned about the new pass first, predictable play calling. Then came the famous Arizona game, and hatred of Rex Grossman was born.

For those of you who are not Bears fans you have to understand something ... Rex (T-Rex) Grossman was one of the most loved people in Chicago. When he was drafted he went to work making the community a better place, and he was rewarded with deserved admiration. Chicago fell in love with Rex Grossman. As well liked as Kyle Orton was two years ago ... when Grossman took the field against Atlanta the stadium was louder than I have ever heard it ... through my TV, of course.

As the season wore on Grossman delivered several stellar performances (all forgotten), and a few horrible ones (which we talked about even when he had stellar games). The vile, disgusting, pathetic, feeble-minded idiocy to follow should have been widely condemned. Sportswriters, sportscasters, fans, and the like all spewed venom to a degree that would make any cobra jealous. Every negative connotation available for quarterbacks was levied upon Rex Grossman by sports commentators ... some of whom played football professionally. Most of Grossman's critics were never football players, and they always ignored the advice coming from former coaches and quarterbacks who were typically calling for people to lay off of Grossman. The worst, however, came from the Bears' fans. I would imagine that Grossman was personally wounded as the fans that once loved him started to boo him. He will not be the first to go through this, and he won't be the last.

There is a disturbing new trend in football these days. Fans used to know football, but not anymore. Fans have become simpletons with little to no knowledge aside from who is going to get them the most fantasy points from week to week. Fans used to understand that new coaches needed at least three years before the program became successful, and new quarterbacks had to be developed over a few years to become stars. This disturbing trend that is destroying the fabric of professional football can be blamed on one man, and one man alone ... John Madden. I call it the Maddenisation of football.

John Madden Football is an addictive game, and I never miss a release, but fans are becoming football stupid because of it. Everyone who plays this game suddenly becomes an expert on how to coach, and be a general manager in the NFL. In the game you can take a crap team to the Super Bowl in the first year. Players are developed into stars by awarding attribute points for being able to press the right buttons fast enough. Because of this game the fans have gotten impatient. Why can't this coach win in his first season, and why can't this quarterback play like a hall of famer his rookie year if I can do it in Madden? This impatience can be seen all around the league. How many coaches have been fired early because the program didn't develop fast enough? Maybe they should talk to Jimmy Johnson. How many great quarterbacks will we never know were great because they had three or four bad games, and lost their job to some other quarterback who suffered the same fate? This is the state of the league, and that same impatience is rearing its ugly head at Rex Grossman right now.

As we approach the draft there is still a cluster of feeble-minded idiots calling for Chicago to draft a quarterback to replace Grossman after starting only one season. I even had a friend (yes, a sportscaster) tell me the week after the Super Bowl that the Bears would never go anywhere with Grossman. I was stunned at the lunacy of such a comment. The Bears just went to the Super Bowl, but this guy doesn't think that's getting somewhere? Maybe he thinks his Seahawks didn't go anywhere when they went to the Super Bowl either. Most of these morons are smacked down by people like Larry Mayer, and deservedly so. I actually wish he'd treat them as poorly as they've treated Grossman. Others find like-minded meatheads on website forums, and even in the official world of sports commentary.

The real motivating factor behind me writing this is the asinine comments about Grossman's Super Bowl performance. We heard all sorts of lies, and hate filled rantings from imbeciles saying that Grossman was the worst Super Bowl quarterback in history. Every one of these debutantes should be strung up from a light pole, and spat upon for stealing our precious oxygen.

They blamed Grossman for the loss, and not the defense that couldn't get Peyton Manning off the field. 20 of 28 isn't bad especially in the rain, and with a few dropped passes. He was very consistent throughout most of the game, and he threw a touchdown. One of the fumbles was on Kreutz, and the other was a wet ball. The two interceptions were late in the game when they were trying to mount a comeback, and one was a slippery ball. The other was a huge mistake. All in all the game Grossman played wasn't great, but he gave the Bears three solid quarters of good quarterbacking before having to take risks to come from behind. Even the NFL Network ragged on these idiots falsely blaming Grossman for the loss.

With all of that said I decided to look at some of the great quarterbacks in the league now, as well as some of the all-time greats to see how they compared to Grossman their first full season. What I found was pretty telling, and I was not shocked by any means. You, however, might be. In his first full season as a starter Rex Grossman's quarterback rating was 73.9. That is not great, but it isn't terrible either. Some of the names below did have terrible ratings in their first year.

• Steve Young 65.5
• Troy Aikman 55.7 -- 2nd year 66.6
• Joe Namath 68.8 -- 2nd year 62.6
• Phil Simms 66 -- 2nd year 58.9
• Doug Williams 52.5
• Terry Bradshaw 30.4 -- 2nd year 59.7
• Dan Fouts 46
  
• Joe Theisman 59.8
• Peyton Manning 71.2
  

All worse than Grossman, and many were even worse their second year. Can you imagine if the attitude we have today was around back then. We wouldn't have a Steve Young or Troy Aikman ... we wouldn't have Peyton Manning. They would have been benched to never be seen again. If any of those quarterbacks were rookies playing in today's league they would be booed out of the stadium. Yet they ended up becoming some of the game's greatest.

Brett Favre, Warren Moon, and Fran Tarkenton all had worse years than Grossman just had in their second season. John Elway and Bart Starr each had several seasons worse than the one Grossman just had, and Rex's rating is similar to the first year ratings of Fran Tarkenton, Johnny Unitas, Carson Palmer, and Drew Brees. They are all within few points of each other. All of the ratings have been converted to the modern quarterback ratings so you can't cry fowl there. Yes they played less games per season with some of those players, but there isn't much I can do about that. Although, if you really want me to take off Grossman's season finale against Green Bay ... I will. That will, of course raise his rating to where I will have to add more names to the list above. Another argument I get when I mention Peyton Manning is that Grossman inherited a better team than Manning did. That doesn't matter at all. Manning got the same team Jim Harbaugh had, and Harbaugh's rating his last year was 86.2. Manning didn't even get close to that rating with the same team ... so that argument is mute.

There is no way of knowing if Rex Grossman is going to pan out, but quarterbacks who throw 23 touchdowns in their first full season typically do. Rex Grossman has performed far better than many of our great quarterbacks have in his first year, and that should be recognized as a positive sign. I don't want to hear that nonsense that he's been in the league a couple of years now, and should have been better. That's crap, and you know it. He's had to learn new offensive systems since he got into the league, and Grossman didn't have a great quarterback to observe from the sidelines like many of the others on the list I gave you. Think about it ... what good quarterback has Grossman had to learn from since getting to Chicago? He's also been the victim of some bad play calling, and an inexperienced quarterbacks coach. Rex has a new quarterbacks coach now, and hopefully he can get Rex back into form.

I've been watching Grossman since his Florida days, and there were many times I didn't recognize him this last season. At one point I swore he had hurt his shoulder, and was keeping it a secret, because he wasn't throwing nearly as far as usual. I saw the field general I was used to vanish, and be replaced with quarterback that predetermined where he was going to throw the ball. Worse of all ... it seems Grossman is afraid to run the ball now. I can't count how many times he should have taken off running this last year, but didn't. He even did it in the Super Bowl which led to an interception instead of an easy gain.

Rex appeared to let the fans of Chicago get to him. When they turned on him he seemed to shut down a little, and he needs to get over that. McNabb went through something very similar a few years back. Hopefully Grossman can bounce back in the same fashion. He's a hell of a teammate and leader, and I've heard more than once that he has ice in his veins.

I didn't write this to make excuses for Grossman, but I did write this to get you some facts that no one discusses. Unfortunately, sports commentary is all about the personal attacks instead of substance. It's all a gag to sell you something. They even tried to drag Lovie Smith into it. No one out there is going to convince me that the media wasn't trying to bait Smith, or Grossman, into a tirade so they could put it on the front cover and sell some magazines. You don't go up to a guy who just had a passer rating over 100 and ask him how it feels to not suck this week unless you're fishing. Grossman has a lot of developing to do ... just like all young quarterbacks. He will get there just like the great quarterbacks before him who performed far worse. The question is ... will we allow him to get there?