Analyzing at the Bears with the help of 22 names, starting with …
Dan Orlvosky (1), the ESPN analyst who came off the bench more than he started as an NFL quarterback. Just because the backup quarterback is the most popular player in any city, he told me, doesn’t make it an easy job.
“Everyone thinks backup quarterback is the greatest job in the world, and there’s a lot of good to it,” he said. “But you do a lot of work with no payoff. Yes, it’s your job. But the competitive payoff, the professional pride payoff, you don’t get. And when the opportunity presents itself, it’s very rare.”
That’s what makes this week so compelling for both Tyson Bagent (2) and Case Keenum (3).
After Caleb Williams (4) pulled his hamstring, Bagent thought he had a long-awaited starting opportunity. His contract expires at the end of next year, and a good stint with the starters would raise his future value. Bagent reported concussion symptoms on Tuesday, though, two days after relieving Williams in the fourth quarter. Every passing day lessens the odds he’ll play against the Eagles.
“You have the thought of, ‘I’m working so hard for this very moment,’” Orlovsky said. “Everyone always told me, ‘Just be ready — you never know when your opportunity is going to come.’ You get it, if you’re Tyson, on a team that you can probably go operate well and continue to make a name and future for yourself …
“If he’s unable to go because of [the concussion] it’s disappointing.”
Enter Keenum, who is 38 and hasn’t started since 2023.
“I’m 43 and I have no idea how guys like Tom Brady (5) did it, I have no idea how a guy like Aaron Rodgers (6) is still playing,” Orlovsky said. “Thirty-eight is not that far off.”
Orlvosky listed three challenges for a backup thrust into the starting role. It starts with game speed — even the crispest practice operates at about 70% of that pace, he said. Scout team quarterbacks take risks under the pretense of testing their own starting defense, and that attitude has to shift on game day. Finally, situational football — third downs, short yardage, and late-game work — requires drilling backups don’t often get.
Keenum has that experience, even if it’s been years since he’s used it in a game.
“That’s why you keep a guy like that around,” Orlovsky said.
The Bears’ only other healthy QB is …
Miller Moss (7), the rookie the Bears cut after training camp. Moss went home to Pacific Palisades, Calif., and wasn’t quite sure what do to.
“For lack a better word,” he said, “I was sitting around, working out and hoping the phone was going to ring.”
When it did, it was the Bears. Bagent’s back spasms leading to the season opener prompted the Bears to fly him out two days before the opener, sign him to the practice squad the next day and use him as their emergency quarterback. He hasn’t been home since.
Monday, he could be one rolled ankle away from playing.
Crazy, right?
“I think getting caught up in possible eventualities is a slippery slope,” he said, “especially with what I’ve seen in the last 12 days.”
Now that’s a grizzly Bear …
Marcedes Lewis (8), the tight end who played his age 40 season in 2024, is the oldest Bear to appear in a game. Not counting specialists, quarterback Todd Collins (9), tackle Jason Peters (10) and Lewis are the only Bears to play their age 39 season.
Only four non-specialists played their age 38 season, and they’re all quarterbacks. Chris Chandler (11) went 3-3 as the starter in 2003 and Dave Krieg (12) went 6-6 in 1996. Rudy Bukich (13) threw seven passes off the bench in 1968.
Then there’s Greg Landry (14), a 14-year NFL vet the Bears pulled out of retirement to play the 1984 regular season finale with Jim McMahon (15) and Steve Fuller (16) hurt. Quarterback Rusty Lisch (17) was so bad the week before that Mike Ditka (18) benched him — for running back Walter Payton (19).
Two days before he turned 38 — which counts as 38 in the NFL’s record-keeping — Landry beat his former team, the Lions. Fuller returned for the playoffs, eventually losing to the 49ers in an NFC title game that motivated Ditka during the next year’s Super Bowl run.
Landry, who played for the USFL’s Chicago Blitz a year before his Bears cameo, later served as the Bears’ offensive coordinator from 1988-92.
At least I had the winner right …
Robert Griffin III (20) and Andrew Luck (21) were the top two players I submitted on my 2011 Heisman Trophy ballot, and they finished in that order. My third-place vote went to Keenum, who set the NCAA’s career passing record — one that, amazingly, still stands —at Houston. He finished seventh.
Thank God it wasn’t Casual Friday …
Jahdae Walker (22), the most boisterous Bear, wore a collared Nike Dri-Fit golf shirt under his practice pads two days before the Vikings game.
“Business Friday,” he said.