Jay Cutler Injury: Caleb Hanie and Potential Replacements for Bears QB

Chicago Bears fans are being greeted this morning with the devastating news that their starting quarterback who has been playing so well this year is out for the remainder of the season with a broken thumb. 

The Bears are still hopeful that he can heal in time to lead the Bears on a playoff run, but that requires them getting to the playoffs first. With seven wins already under their belt, that means they need three more wins in their final six games to get to the postseason. 

The Bears have the special teams, the defense and the running game to do that. They just need a quarterback who can manage games—not necessarily win them. 

Caleb Hanie

The first and most obvious option for the Bears is to go to their backup quarterback. That's why they have backups in the first place, to actually backup the quarterback. 

Hanie knows the offense. He knows the players. He's mobile. He did an adequate job when filling in for Cutler last year int he NFC Championship Game. That's all the reasons to start him. 

On the negative side, there's the fact that he has 14 regular season pass attempts in his entire career, and this might not be the time for on-the-job training. 

Additionally, Mike Martz isn't exactly the president of his fan club. Whatever the Bears do, it's likely that Haney will get at least one start to prove himself. 

Trent Edwards

Trent Edwards has a good arm and can make good throws when given time. While the Bears offensive line has shown a lot of improvement, it's hard to know how much of that is Cutler buying that extra half-a-second and how much of that is Tice's improvements. 

Edwards has 30 career picks to just 26 career TDs. Being the youngest of the players available there's something attractive about that. He might be ruined though, and that's why he's available. 

Edwards is skittish in the backfield after getting knocked around and sacked too much. The Chicago backfield might not be the best opportunity for him. 

Edwards could fit in a some situations. Chicago is not one of them. 

Jake Delhomme

Jake Delhomme is not what he once was but he is still a capable quarterback. He has a career record of 56-40 and a career passer rating of 81.2. He has 20,764 career passing yards. He's not great, but he is proven. 

It's probably not fair to judge what he would do in Chicago based on what he did the last few times we saw him. Delhomme has a reasonable ability to read defense, check through his progressions and escape in the pocket and complete a pass. 

In other words, Delhomme is the perfect example of a competent game manager.

David Garrard

David Garrard was inexplicably released this year by the Jacksonville Jaguars but he is still a capable quarterback. He has a career record of 39-37 as a starter with a QB rating of 85.8. 

Garrard is not a "winner" in the sense he's not the player who is gong to lead the team, but he is a good and proven manager. He has good scrambling ability with 1,740 scrambling yards in his career. He also has a strong arm, which he'll need to handle the windy conditions of Soldier Field. 

On the negative side, he has trouble avoiding the sack. Now I know this seems to be in contradiction with the whole notion of being a good scrambler, but Garrard's problem is that he's not able to scramble and then find receivers. He either rushes for yards or gets sacked.

That ability to move around in the backfield and then complete the pass down field that Cutler has done so well this year is not something Garrard has. You could do worse than Garrard but he's probably not the best answer. 

Marc Bulger

Marc Bulger is a long way from the best quarterback available but what he does have that the others don't is a history with Mike Martz. 

If you discount the 2005 season where Martz had illness issues which kept him out for most of the year, and just look at Bulger's first three years under Martz, he had 9,635 yards in just 36 games, or 267 yards a game. He had 57 TDs to 42 picks. He had a passer rating of 89.7.

Martz and Bulger's shared history make Bulger a good fit, even if he is a little old. The one thing to be concerned about here is Bulger's ability to move when pressured. 

Brett Favre

You know the world has changed in the last five years when people start picturing Brett Favre in a Chicago Bears uniform, but like it or lump it, Favre might be the best answer. Whatever else you want to say about him it's hard to not think of him right now. 

Favre is the quarterback Cutler is most often compared to. He has the ability to create plays out of nothing and that is the single skill the Bears will be missing the most with Cutler out. Crazy as it sounds, it might be true.

Yes, you might as well be picturing Ulysses S. Grant in a Confederate uniform, but Favre is probably the best option available.