Who Should Back Up Jay Cutler For the Chicago Bears?

The Bears are doing some strange things at training camp with their backup quarterback position.

No. It doesn’t have a thing to do with Jay Cutler.

Brett Basanez came into camp as the third quarterback, with second-year holdover Caleb Hanie the backup to Jay Cutler. In the past three days Basanez has been taking almost all of the second-string snaps while Hanie has been with the third string.

I cornered Lovie Smith after his daily press conference and asked him about the significance, and he said virtually the same thing offensive coordinator Ron Turner said earlier in the day after lunch: Essentially, it was “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”

“Maybe it’s just different looks right now,” Smith said. “We hadn’t gotten him (Basanez) a whole lot of snaps. We’re trying to get a good look at him and stuff. I would read nothing into it. He’s still our three and we’ll go from there.”

I asked if it’s 2 and 2A between Hanie and Basanez and he said of Basanez, “He’s three.”
Basanez, who played for Northwestern and threw 11 passes for the Carolina Panthers before being cut, signed with the Bears in February, so he hasn’t had a lot of snaps. He’s just had mini-camp and the 13 organized team activity workouts.

The Bears spent most of their OTAs trying to get Cutler familiar with the offense and his receivers, so it’s understandable that the Bears don’t know a lot about Basanez.
But Hanie has looked far less than impressive with his snaps during the early practices and Basanez actually put together a good practice on Tuesday, culminated by a decent two-minute drill with the backups.

So why is all this so important? After all, we’re talking about backups and Cutler is the entire focal point of this Bears season.

Well, the Bears haven’t been able to complete a full season with the No. 1 quarterback staying in the lineup since 1995. Whether by benching or injury, the Bears have always had to turn to their man in waiting.

Hanie’s only experience in the NFL is 29-of-49 passes for 321 yards and three touchdowns with two interceptions (82.1 rating) last preseason. He was active only one regular-season game and didn’t play.

It would seem there is no better candidate for a veteran backup quarterback than the Bears.

It’s extremely difficult to win in the NFL using a backup anyway, but relying on two undrafted free agents with virtually no playing experience is a complete prayer.
It looks like they’re evaluating the backups closely with the idea of bringing in a veteran, but they’ll probably play the first preseason game in Buffalo first.

They can’t wait too long, though.

There are some veterans available, but let’s not go down the Michael Vick trail again:
“He would be different,” Smith said about Vick. “But again for us, we like our football team that we have right now. There aren’t any plans to go in that direction.”

Vick would be a debacle for the Bears as it might lead to Cutler looking over his shoulder—and we’ve already seen what happens in Denver when he feels threatened.

So who is available?

Brooks Bollinger, J.P Losman and of course there’s always Tim Rattay. Maybe you could talk Gus Frerotte into coming back in as a backup. The Bears might just be forced to go with Hanie and Basanez considering the limited experienced talent available.

They also could consider someone who gets cut later in August, but it’s going to be rather late to be learning a new offense then. It would have to be someone with a ton of experience coming into rough situations.

What about Brian Griese? Been there, done thnt.at.

But it has to make you think.