With Jay Cutler already well on his way to fully recovering from the knee injury that sidelined him during the NFC Championship game, and Caleb Hanie’s stock on the rise after he led the team on two scoring drives in that same game, you’d think the Bears would be set at quarterback.
They have even signed Matt Gutierrez, who impressed offensive coordinator Mike Martz during his brief stint with the team during last year’s training camp, to be the third stringer.
But that won’t stop Jerry Angelo from looking hard at quarterbacks in the 2011 draft, which starts Thursday. The Bears’ general manager said teams have to always be on the lookout for quarterback talent regardless of how set they may appear to be at the position.
“It can never be a luxury position,” he said. “We know that. We’re looking hard again this year. We really want to develop our own. I really thought we had a good plan last year. The thing that really impacted that plan from coming to fruition [was] Caleb Hanie got hurt at a bad time. He got hurt early in the preseason and was going to miss the whole preseason. With a new staff having to come in, now they really can’t evaluate him. He can’t develop. What do you do? You can’t take a sixth-round draft pick and go into the season saying that he’s gonna be the backup. That’s not fair to the football team and/or him. So we went out and we got the veteran. That’s just what you have to do. But our goal, our plan — I speak for our coaches as well — is to develop our own players. We feel real good about that. Mike Martz’s track record in doing that has been very good and there’s no reason we can’t do that. So that will be our goal again this year.”
