🔥 🏈 THE CSS BEST: 3 Old-School Chicago Bears Quarterbacks I Loved to Hate and Hated to Love 🏈 🔥
CSS's "greatest hits" week wraps it up with a reminiscence of the back-in-the-day Bears' QB who I continued to support, even when they were hot garbage.
Over the last six months, Chicago Sports Stuff has been lucky enough to add a whole bunch of subscribers, readers who haven’t seen some of CSS’s early-era goodies. So this week, we’re going to dig in the crates and re-up some of our favorite evergreen articles.
Thanks for supporting us, and feel free to reach out with comments, questions, or mailbag letters: ChicagoSporstsStuff.com.
DID YOU KNOW that since 1970, the Chicago Bears have had 6,216 different starting quarterbacks, give or take?
And did you know that during that same stretch, the Green Bay Packers have had three starting quarterbacks, give or take?
The Bears’ record since 1970? 406-436-1.
The Packers’ record since 1970? 455-378-10.
The obvious takeaway from those win-loss numbers is that NFL teams with settled QB situations tend to be way more successful than franchises who trot out 117.2 starting signal-callers per season.
Yet despite Chicago’s eternal quarterback flux, we Bears fans persevere. We sit through Moses Moreno, and Shane Matthews, and Craig Krenzel, and Jonathan Quinn, and my personal fave, Peter Tom Willis, and we keep coming back for more.
What with rookie gunslinger Caleb Williams leading the Chicago’s offense, the Bears’ QB landscape is theoretically on an upward trajectory. But even if the USC product becomes the first Windy City signal-caller to ever cobble together 4,000 passing yards in a single season, the memory of Chicago’s parade of QB blechhhh will never fade.
Now old dudes like me have more blechhhh QBs upon whom to reflect because, y’know, we’re old, and have thus had the distinct displeasure of enduring more lousy quarterbacks than new-school fans. To that end, here are three of the pass chuckers (and, in two cases, run-happy) QBs who made my childhood both magical and miserable.
(Note: Being that I’m working primarily from memory, there’s like a 94% chance that some, if not all of the below anecdotes are, um, wrong.)
BOBBY DOUGLAS
Bobby Douglass really, really wanted to be Fran Tarkenton.
He wanted to dominate with his arm like Tarkenton. He wanted to dominate with his legs like Tarkenton. And he wanted to win like Tarkenton.
He didn’t. He didn’t. And he didn’t.
To his credit, Bobby was an effort guy. He tried, and he tried hard, and that’s something that even a little kid who didn’t know what a holding penalty was could both recognize and appreciate.
For a 1970s-era quarterback, Douglass was huge — we’re talking 6’4”, 225, as opposed to Tarkenton’s 6’0”, 190, making him among the largest individuals on Chicago’s roster — and when nobody was open (which was a regular thing with those iterations of the Bears), the University of Kansas grad was more than happy to take off running. And in my hazy memory, he was impossible to bring down.
One thing I know for certain is that Bobby threw the ball hard, sometimes to the tune of 97 MPH. (As comparison, John Elway, who many believe to be among the fastest throwers in league history, topped out around 80.) I have a trace memory of Douglass hurling a ball thorough the chest of his WR1, George Farmer.
Was Douglass fun to watch? To this budding fan, absolutely. I mean, what child doesn’t dig digging a bulldozer behind center? Sure, Bobby’s record as a starter was 14-43-1 (oy gevalt), but that didn’t make his quirky style of play any less enchanting to my pre-teen self.
BOB AVELLINI
I’ll preface this section by saying that Battlin’ Bob passed away earlier this month, so the below dissing is done with the utmost of affection.)
At one time or another, all of us have engaged in some measure of sports schadenfreude, the phenomenon in which we root against one or more of the players on our team, with the hope that their lousy performance will get them cut and/or replaced.
Before I knew what schadenfreude was, I was schadenfreude-ing the hell out of Bob Avellini. I wanted him cut and/or replaced, primarily because if he was dropping back to pass, then Walter Payton wasn’t getting a handoff.
And when Sweetness wasn’t getting handoffs, the Bears’ offense wasn’t super-fun.
The running joke about Avellini — an exceedingly erratic thrower — was that when he was under center, the Bears offensive paradigm was all about four P’s: Payton, Payton, Pass, Punt.
It was a drag, but those four P’s were far more appealing than the three P’s of Pass, Pass, Pickoff.
All that said, Avellini was superb at sticking the rock in Payton’s breadbasket — Walter delivered his best statistical seasons during Bob’s tenure — and throughout his nine years wearing blue and orange, the ex-Maryland Terrapin was competent enough to keep the Bears at or around .500, finishing his Chicago career with a record of 35-38.
Yes, Avellini had a better winning percentage than Douglass. But he wasn’t nearly as much fun.
VINCE EVANS
Here’s one of those anecdotes that I might or might not remember correctly.
It’s a Monday night in December of 1981 (I think). The Bears are hosting the Washington Redskins (I think). Vince Evans is now Chicago’s starting quarterback, replacing one Robert Hayden Avellini (that one, I got right).
We’re psyched about Evans because, unlike Avellini, the dude has wheels. Not Justin Fields-level wheels, but Vince is still a helluva runner.
It’s late in the game, and the Bears are, per usual, playing catch-up. The play-calling, courtesy of HC Neill Armstrong and/or OC Ted Marchibroda is, also per usual, conservative AF, meaning we never — never — see a single designed QB run. Never.
This is a problem, because Chicago’s receiving corps is led by the immortal Brian Baschnagel and the even more immortal Rickey Watts, so Vince is often forced to take running matters into his own hands.
Anyhoo, it’s third-and-13 (I think), and Baschnagel and Watts fly down the field, and Payton runs a nifty flat route. Problem is Payton’s arguably the Bears’ best pass protector, something of which the Washington D is well aware. So the ‘Skins’ blitz, and Evans, rather than throw the ball away or put his head down and plow upfield, runs backwards.
And backwards.
And more backwards.
And even more backwards.
For what feels like three minutes.
And, naturally, he gets sacked.
For a 56-yard loss.
Meaning it’s now fourth-and-69.
Watching Vince Evans do stuff like that on a regular basis was masochistically enjoyable. More importantly, it prepared us for Moses Moreno. And Shane Matthews. And Craig Krenzel. And Jonathan Quinn.
And my personal fave, Peter Tom Willis.