Friday night, as Chad Hutchinson did his best Ryan Leaf/Rick Mirer/Jonathan Quinn imitation, the fans at Soldier Field were giving it to him hard and heavy. I think on one occasion he went to lick 2 fingers on his throwing hand, just lapped one of them, and people started booing and yelled that he sucked. (Speaking of sucked--note to self--find Terrell Buckley's golden sound bite "People say I'm suck" and post it here.)
Bears fans don't have a huge nor contentious history with Hutchinson. And while it was obvious his performance was terrible (doesn't get lower than a 0.0 passer rating), were the fans really booing him? He wasn't bad last year. He wasn't good, but he wasn't bad. That offense was pretty rancid, from the coach to the players to the plays being run. Watching at home it seemed like they were not booing Hutchinson the player so much as they were the state of the Bears and/or the Bears approach to personnel decisions. The boos were actually prods. I think that the crowd at Soldier Field booed more to incite Bears brass to take action, rather than to rip on Hutchinson. The boos said, "Make a move. Find intolerance in your hearts. We are so done. We're not going to sit around and watch this guy stink up the place like so many others past and so many to come in the future. We demand a change of thought and a commitment to action. Save your PC for the $10k speeches at the Rotary Club."
OK, so maybe it wasn't quite like that. But you dig it. We got what we wanted. We liked it. The Bears brass had a moment of clarity. Kyle Orton is now the starter. The guy who can't produce is gone. Nothing against him. He seems like a good guy, a nice person. But we weren't going to wait for them to play the best player at that position--regardless of if he was a rookie, a veteran, a robot or a computer generated figure from Madden '06. Dig it to the most, man.
A few more questions though. Would they have pulled Hutchinson if the game was in Buffalo instead of Chicago? I don't think so. Is there really any other course than to stick with Orton the whole season? If he starts 0-5, why put Blake in then? If he starts 5-0, he's the man. If he's 3-2, right on. If he's 2-3, he'll get better right?
If Orton defies odds and puts up incredible numbers this season, you would think he'd be the starter next year going into camp. Or would they still favor Grossman? What if Orton is just mediocre? Will the Bears have a competition?
OK, that's too far ahead. But maybe this will all work out nicely. Last question though: What was that Jeff George thing all about?
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