MVN - Most Valuable Network

Just Lose, Baby.

Anyone who still cheers for Bears victories for the rest of the 2007 season is dumb. The best thing the Bears can do for the rest of the year is lose and lose miserably. The greatest Kyle Orton contribution would be to throw pick after pick after pick and fumble the ball at least four times a game. If the Bears go 5-11, I’ll consider this year a success.

Maybe I’m being a little rash, but let’s face the facts: at this point, 5-11 is a whole lot better than 8-8, 7-9 or 6-10. Before you can scroll down to the comments section and say “How can you say that and call yourself a true Bears fan,” let me explain.

The more games the Bears win, the lower their draft pick becomes. At this point in time, it is virtually impossible for the Bears to make the playoffs with an 8-8 season. They haven’t won back to back games all year and will need so many unrealistic, chance losses by other teams that the idea is laughable. Only an irrational person will sit here and try to argue that the Bears’ playoff hopes are still alive. And, as we’ve seen all year long, the Bears need a big game quarterback with the potential to lead them to and beyond the playoffs in the years to come. This equates to Matt Ryan, Brian Brohm or Andre Woodson, all of which should go either within or just a few picks below the top 10 picks. The only way the Bears can realistically get one of these quarterbacks is if they lose enough games to get a top ten draft pick. Five-and-eleven would certainly do that.

I’m sure there are people out there who will say, “Just win the next three games and trade for McNabb.” That assumes that the Bears can win consecutive games, however. Again, haven’t done that all year. But I have thought about Donovan McNabb behind center for weeks now. Something tells me that might not be as good an idea as it sounds. Consider the fact that Donovan McNabb is a very good quarterback. Thus, he’s going to want a very good quarterback’s salary. The Bears have a lot of leaks to fix next year other than quarterback (reinvesting in Lance Briggs, finding some kind of band-aid for the morbid state of RB, look into resigning Bernard Berrian and Muhsin Muhammad or failing that maybe Patrick Crayton just to name a few). Given the situation, it doesn’t seem worth it to me to pay a grandiose amount of money to a quarterback who, though still very good, has been injured all too often over the past three years. Also, the Bears aren’t going to be the only team looking to acquire McNabb. The Ravens need a quarterback just as bad as we do. The last we need is a distance micturating contest on our hands for what will prove to be an expensive quarterback.

Then again, there’s always the question of will we get another Grossman with a draft pick? We all know the awful luck the Bears have had with drafting QBs in the first round in the past 20 years or so, so why should this be any different? I don’t have an answer to that, as I can’t see into the future. But since I highly doubt the Bears front office will have the ability to swallow their pride and pick another running back in the first round. If they do not trade for McNabb, a QB must be drafted or else they face the risk of sparking the Great Chicago Fire, part II.

I’d draft either Brohm or Ryan over trading for McNabb. Both show an enormous amount of potential as top of the line quarterbacks. They’re young and healthy and, given that Bernard Berrian and Muhsin Muhammad return (barring that, assuming the Bears pick up, say, Patrick Crayton), Greg Olsen continues to be a huge receiving threat and the offensive line comes to play next year, these quarterbacks might have a shot to get good, fast. McNabb simply seems like too big a liability with injuries.

It isn’t easy to believe that the best thing the Bears can do now is lose, especially with games against both the Vikings and the Packers coming up. But at this point in time, for the sake of a higher draft pick, I can only hope against my fandom that the Bears lose out. That’s not to say, “Throw the games and lose on purpose.” I simply want the season to progress as it has with the Bears’ best not being good enough.

Face it: Orton is not going to lead them to victory. When he started back in 2005, he did nothing more than game manage, which was good enough since the defense was so potent. This year, the defense doesn’t look so hot. Orton will have to actively go out there and win games, something neither he, nor any other Bears quarterback this year, have consistently done.

So as the Bears go in the Metrodome to play Minnesota this week, there are only two things I hope for: that Adam Archuleta doesn’t play and that Minnesota wins. Though I’ll still cheer them towards victory, in the back of my mind I know that I’m being stupid; each game they win is one less chance to make this year’s hopeless team into a better one next year. It’s a horrid conflict of interest. Hard as it is to say, losing out the best thing this Bears team can do.

To rephrase an Al Davis quote, “Just lose, baby.”

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 16th, 2007 at 4:31 pm and is filed under Muhsin Muhammad, Brian Brohm, Kyle Orton, Bears' Off-Season, Bernard Berrian, 2008 NFL Draft, Matt Ryan, Donovan McNabb. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.