Oh, boy. Here we go.
The backup-quarterback thing.
Let me start with a personal tale from yore.
I was a lad when my father took me to my first Bears game. It was against the Cowboys at Wrigley Field.
Two memories stick: Cowboys receiver Tommy McDonald didn’t wear a facemask, and at some point the home crowd began chanting, ‘‘We want Rudy!’’
This was well before the movie ‘‘Rudy,’’ so no one was cheering for Rudy Ruettiger, the 5-6, 165-pound Notre Dame defensive end who played for a minute against Georgia Tech on Nov. 8, 1975.
No, the crowd was cheering for Rudy Bukich, the backup quarterback. The starter was Billy Wade. Wade was in the process of throwing three interceptions and no touchdowns in a 24-10 loss.
I’d never heard of Bukich, so I asked my dad who Rudy was.
‘‘The backup quarterback,’’ he said.
‘‘Why do they want him?’’
I think my father answered, ‘‘Because he’s not the starter.’’
You see, it’s not who the backup is but who he isn’t.
And now people want to see more of Bears backup Tyson Bagent. He’s not starter Justin Fields, and that might be his greatest qualification to lead the Bears.
Of course, it appears Bagent will be playing, no matter what.
Fields dislocated his right thumb against the Vikings and likely will be out for a while. One remembers former Bears quarterback Jay Cutler’s thumb injury — a Bennett’s fracture at the base of his right thumb — that required surgery with pins to hold the bones in place.
Cutler missed the final six games of the 2011 season because of it. And while Fields is dealing with ligament damage and not a broken bone, who knows how long it will take for him to get back to normal? During his surgery, Cutler reportedly held a sterilized NFL football to make sure his grip wouldn’t be affected.
A right thumb is pretty important for a right-handed passer. The opposable thumb, after all, is what separates us from, say, grizzly bears. It’s why Julius Caesar, during the Gallic Wars, made examples of captured soldiers by amputating their thumbs, so they couldn’t hold weapons.
Point made?
Still, there’s enthusiasm for Bagent, an undrafted kid out of Division II Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, West Virginia.
Indeed, a lot of Bears fans really liked his preseason performance. Bears brass apparently did, too, given that the team signed him, cut P.J. Walker and moved Nathan Peterman to third string.
Bagent wasn’t drafted, which is odd. He had all kinds of high school and D-II college honors, and he did well in the Senior Bowl and the NFL Scouting Combine. A 36-inch vertical leap and 10-foot long jump are pretty solid.
His arm strength is decent, and he’s big enough at 6-3 and 215 pounds. But he played against lesser foes in college, and you just never know about backups. They’re often loved — until they play.
Bagent teased us with an up-and-down performance against the Vikings after Fields was hurt.
Of his defeat-sealing interception he said, ‘‘I’ve got to fix that going forward.’’
One remembers Cutler saying continually of mistakes, ‘‘We’ll clean that up.’’ But sometimes fixing and cleaning aren’t so simple.
So the Bears are back in quarterback hell, where they seem to abide. If they tank right now at 1-5 and the 0-6 Panthers continue their ineptitude, the Bears, who own the Panthers’ first pick in 2024, could get the No. 1 and No. 2 overall choices next spring.
Theoretically, they could take USC’s Caleb Williams and North Carolina’s Drake Maye, the two favorite quarterbacks out there. The Bears could stockpile backup quarterbacks until somebody — anybody — shined through.
But the Bears likely would just screw them up, as they eventually seem to screw up all quarterbacks.
Packers fans screamed for backup Aaron Rodgers at the end of Brett Favre’s reign. Of course, Tom Brady was the backup king who replaced Drew Bledsoe with the Patriots. And there’s ‘‘Mr. Irrelevant’’ Brock Purdy, the backup who did well enough for the 49ers that the team let Jimmy Garoppolo go to the Raiders and traded Trey Lance.
But Bagent? Tough odds for success, baby.
As for old Rudy Bukich, he did eventually take over as the Bears’ starter, had a pretty good season in 1965, then faded away. The Bears? They never made the playoffs under Rudy.
The backup.
