Chicago Bears: A sad, comedic look at the most interesting QB position battles

The century-long struggle to find competence at quarterback continues for the Chicago Bears in 2020. Despite little success, it’s provided us with some interesting position battles over the years.

With a century worth of football as their witness, the Chicago Bears have had just about every sort of quarterback walk through the door. We’ve had quarterbacks that ownership tried to convert into tight ends, quarterbacks that referred to the owner as “chickenbleep,” 35-year-old “saviors,” a kicker in the top-10 in franchise passing yards — even quarterbacks with more interceptions than touchdowns (an ungodly 48 of a possible 94 Bears quarterbacks own this distinction).

Unfortunately, the keyword there was “just about.”

Mitchell Trubisky’s Pro Bowl nod ended a 23-year drought at the quarterback position, but just as it’s always been, it proved to be a one step forward, two steps backward process. As a case in point, consider this. In the Super Bowl era, Chicago Bears signal-callers rank dead last in nearly every meaningful statistic.

The Bears will be entering 2020 the same way they entered 1920, and the same they’ll probably enter 2120: questions at the NFL’s most pivotal position.

With the modern NFL ensuring that winning 7-3 slugfests are likely in the far rearview, Chicago comes in under the hope that either Trubisky or $24 million man Nick Foles can take the driver’s seat and keep Chicago on the road.

Over the last 20 seasons, the Bears have employed 27 starting quarterbacks (second only to the Browns). And you can bet that on at least a couple of those occasions, you had head coaches in deep contemplation about which quarterback they wanted to either lose or win those 7-3 games with.

As the old saying goes, if you have two quarterbacks, you really have none.  Chicago could never get a Joe Montana vs. Steve Young, or a Roger Staubach vs. Craig Morton. But they always could entertain.

Here, we’ll take a look at some of the most entertaining (because “greatest” would be too much justice) position battles at the quarterback position, and maybe, even uncover clues of how this one could go.