Stop Blaming Rex Grossman

Bears fans love to blame Rex Grossman for not winning the Super Bowl in 2006, but I don't think this is fair.

Welcome back to my Sports Passion Project, where I’ve put a somewhat confrontational title at the top of this article for a reason.

The 2006 Chicago Bears have become an urban legend, even though they did not play that long ago. In general, people don’t remember anything about them, other than the fact that Brian Urlacher was on the team, and that they won 13 games with Rex Grossman at QB.

I once heard a great line somewhere in a QB conversation. It goes like this: "People who believe the QB position is all about winning are doomed to spend their eternity watching Rex Grossman." This joke implies a lot. It references a very bad QB, but yet one not quite bad enough to mess up Chicago's season. This is the mythical 'just good enough' quarterback that every fan of a team with a great defence claims to need, yet complains vociferously about when they have.

Here's the thing.

Upon closer inspection, I don't think Rex deserves all this slander. He has had his name dragged through the mud a lot over the ensuing 17 years since this 2006 season, and for what? Is it because he lost the Super Bowl? Lots of great players have done that. It’s not as if his football reference numbers look bad either. He threw for better than 3000 yards, and threw more TDs than INTs. We don’t really care about numbers like that around here, but the average fan does, which again leads me to believe that Rex Grossman was not that bad.

So where does all this hate come from?

2006 was nearly 20 years ago now, and I still hear people on a regular basis talking about Rex Grossman as if he was a bad player. I simply disagree. He was not a bad player, nor was he a hinderance to the 2006 Chicago Bears, and I’m going to prove it to you.

In typical form for my Sports Passion Project, I’m going to take a deep dive into the 2006 season in order to find an excuse to call a really bad player good. Take this ride with me.

Rex was the 2003 first round pick of the Chicago Bears, but coming into 2006 they've gotten nothing out of him. Due to a cocktail of injuries including a broken finger in 2003, torn knee ligaments in 2004 (which forever stole his athleticism), and a broken ankle in 2005, he has started a total of eight games, coming into his fourth NFL season.

This is the first thing people love to forget about 2006 Rex Grossman. Despite having the age and injuries of a veteran, he does not have the experience of a veteran. Eight NFL starts is not a lot of NFL starts. Nevertheless, it’s frustrating for fans of the Bears, who have been waiting for a good QB for more than a decade by 2006, to tolerate rookie mistakes out of a player the team drafted three years ago, and I think this disconnect is where a lot of the hate for Rex comes from.

Coming into the 2006 season, Rex has the experience level of a second year player, but the fans are treating him as if he’s a fourth year player. This is a subtle but important difference. Keep it in the back of your mind as we go along.

In the meantime, waiting for Rex to get healthy, Chicago has had to use players like Kordell Stewart, Craig Krenzel, Chad Hutchinson, and Kyle Orton. Altogether, Chicago has had the worst QB play in the league since 1999, and it's all because their coveted first round pick cannot get onto the field for more than three games in a season.

This is not Rex’s fault. Nobody wants to get injured, but to the fans, it is Rex’s fault.

The Bears haven't had a good quarterback since 1995 Erik Kramer (who I promise I will talk about soon), and they are fed up with it. Once again, this isn't Rex's fault, but the life of a QB is to take the fall for things that aren't your fault, and Rex is no exception. I’ve brushed over this saga in just a few paragraphs, but in real life, this balancing act of Chicago fans waiting for him finally to be able to play has been going on for years. They have had enough of this act. As such, when Rex struggles in his two preseason outings, he's booed by his own home fans.

This is a bad hand to be dealt.

It’s bad enough that the persistent lower body injuries mean that Rex will never be the same player in the NFL that he was in college athletically, but to be booed by his own fans for the privilege has to hurt. There’s no way it doesn’t. Rex has been trying his hardest for years to get back, and now that he finally is back, all it takes is a few bad exhibition games for the boo birds to come out? That doesn’t feel fair.

This undeserved slander is the start of a life long trend for Rex, and we're not even into the regular season yet.

If you'd like a hint that we're in another era in Bears football, look at the spread for week one. Coming into Green Bay, the Bears have won at Lambeau two of the last three seasons. We're four point road favourites. All of that feels absolutely outrageous to say. Could you imagine Chicago being road favourites in Green Bay at any point in the last 15 years?

Wild chapters.

Despite the 2006 Green Bay Packers not being a terribly strong opponent, the Bears don't know what they have in Rex Grossman. They know he’s good. They selected him in the first round for a reason, and his career EPA/Play in the 276 times he has been able to touch the ball from 2003-2005 is positive, but it’s just hard to tell what’s there in a player who’s spent much more time injured than healthy, and who struggled immensely in the preseason.

OC Ron Turner states his position by calling 37 rush plays for a Chicago rush offence that'd ranked a meagre 20th in 2005, against a Green Bay rush defence that'd been top ten in 2005. The result is what you'd expect. 37 wasted plays. 37 plays that make the Bears more likely to score just nine times. 37 plays that generate -0.25 EPA/Play.

Despite this toothless rushing attack, Rex has an amazing game. An otherworldly game. An NFL coming out party the likes of which you don’t see very often in a man’s first game as the full time starter. In all, he generates 0.45 EPA/Play in this game, as the Bears wipe the floor with the Packers 26-0. Would the Bears have won even if Rex generated 0 total EPA? Yes, but it sure is more fun to win with a QB generating 0.45 EPA/Play, especially for a Chicago fanbase that hasn’t seen any points scored since they got rid of Erik Kramer in 1998.

Not a bad start for sexy Rexy, but we all know the narrative. Supposedly, Rex Grossman is very bad. There surely can't be many more great games like this.

Right?

If you’re one of those that dislikes Rex Grossman, you may like to skip the next few paragraphs.

20 of 27 for 289 yards, four touchdowns and 0.82 (!) EPA/Play before being taken out in the fourth quarter of a week two home game says that Rex Grossman just played a better game than Patrick Mahomes has ever played. You may think I’m kidding, but show me the time Patrick ever generated 0.82 EPA/Play in a game. I can assure you there isn’t one.

This is greatness. Amongst all QB games in the play tracking era (1999-onwards) with at least 29 drop backs, 0.82 EPA/Play is the 38th best QB game ever. An exhaustive list of every QB who’s generated 0.82 EPA/Play in a game at least close enough to mandate a QB gets 29 touches in the modern era includes only 23 names:

Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Aaron Rodgers, Kurt Warner, Philip Rivers, Brett Favre, Lamar Jackson, Tony Romo, Steve McNair, Russell Wilson, Jared Goff, Michael Vick, Geno Smith, Deshaun Watson, Joe Flacco, Kerry Collins, Andrew Luck, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Nick Foles, Mitch Trubisky, Josh McCown, and Rex Grossman.

If your favourite QB isn’t on that list, Rex Grossman’s best game is better than his best game. Just in the new millennium, this applies to guys like Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Trent Green, Ben Roethlisberger, Matt Ryan, etc.. I know it's a home game against the 2006 Detroit Lions, which tempers the excitement a little bit, but Jon Kitna did have one of the best games of any QB all season against this vaunted Chicago defence. It just doesn’t seem like it, because Jon played well, against a QB who was having one of the best days ever.

That may slip past you, but a QB playing well against the Bears, and Chicago still winning, is not something that happens in the 2000s. This is a significant occurrence, because we did not just win despite Jon Kitna playing well, we beat Detroit by 27 points despite Jon Kitna playing well. It looks as if we’ve finally got a QB that can give us some runway, so that our defence doesn’t have to be perfect all the time.

Does anybody even remember that Rex had this in him? This is the second best QB game the Bears have had in the last 25 years. I can think of only one game the Bears have ever had in their long history that trumps this one (Josh McCown vs Dallas in 2013, read more here), and that is a real contender for the best QB game of all time. If this were a regular franchise, Rex could be number one.

Rex Grossman isn't just off to a good start in the first two weeks. He's off to the best start in the NFL, and one of the best two week openings to a season in the history of the league. Everybody remembers how electric the Saints were in the opening two weeks of the 2024 NFL season. Over those two games, Derek Carr generated 0.556 EPA/Play. That is not a patch on Rex’s 0.633 to begin 2006. That’s the kind of greatness we’re talking about here.

Needless to say, the boos are long gone. However, it’s still only two weeks, against what turn out to be really bad teams in Green Bay and Detroit. The 2006 NFC is weak, but there are some real challenges on the horizon, especially for a QB who is still just 330 touches into his NFL career like Rex Grossman.

The first of these challenges comes in week three on the road against the Minnesota Vikings, where we see that Rex is perhaps not prepared to face great defence just yet.

This game in Minnesota is a struggle between the 2nd (Chicago) and third (Minnesota) ranked defences in the NFL, and plays out that way. There are positives though. For instance, the Bears finally understand not to waste thirty plays per game on our awful rush offence, and instead let Rex drop back to pass 44 times. This is good. It’s a sign of confidence out of Rex’s coaches that they let him throw the ball so often against such a great defence.

However, there are negative.

Rex is struggling. He's struggling badly. In the first half, we can only muster three points, and are down 6-3 at the half. This is a big come down from being one of the best QBs through two weeks in the history of the league. Of course, nobody thought Rex Grossman was the best QB in the league, the come down was always going to happen, but this is really bad. If we’re is going to win this game, something has to change, and it does.

On the first two drives of the second half, Rex gets us into the red zone, but (with the bad fortune of having a TD overturned by video review) we have to settle for three both times.

Luckily, both of these drives take forever. This means it takes just a couple Viking three and outs to have the ball again, with a lead, to begin the fourth quarter. The Viking offence has no chance against our defence, so despite the lead being just 9-6, NFLFastR gives us a 73 percent chance to win from this position, and this offensive touch is a great chance to put the Vikings away for good.

From what we've seen so far, there is no chance this Vikings offence can come back from even six points down, so the game is on the table here for Rex. Even a field goal will likely seal the deal, but we have to be careful, as a big time punt has us backed up against our own goal line.

On first down, Rex drops back into his own end zone. He rolls right, and he sees nothing, so he throws the ball away. At least he tries to, but in his haste to get the ball out of his hands, he doesn't get it all the way out of danger. He can’t get enough arm on it. It doesn’t go all the way out of bounds. It's intercepted and ran into the end zone, and in a flash, we’re losing 13-9.

This is what I meant when I said Rex did not have the experience level of a four year NFL veteran.

This was a brutal interception. One of the worst you will ever see. One that truthfully shouldn't have been thrown by an NFL quarterback, regardless of experience level, especially not one who generated 0.633 EPA/Play in his first two games. In the aftermath of the game, Rex himself admits to ‘throwing the ball blindly’ on this play. He didn’t even look at the defenders. The rush was coming, and he needed to get the ball away.

He got it away alright.

This is the dichotomy of Rex Grossman. He will play like a man possessed in the first two weeks of the season, and then throw an INT that wouldn’t even be acceptable at the college level in a crucial moment of the game against Minnesota. It’s not that he can’t handle pressure. Rex’s sk%+ at season’s end will be 114. He’s actually fantastic at handling pressure, but for some inexplicable reason, he lost his head in this moment, and threw the ball where it did not need to be thrown. This is not the last time we will see a moment like this in the 2006 season.

This is the type of interception that’s so bad it has the potential to mess with the confidence of the offence. If you’re an NFL fan, you know what I’m talking about. There are some throws that are just not NFL throws, that should never be seen, not even in practice. I have a hypothesis that Mac Jones’ downfall as an NFL starter began with a moment like this.

If it happens to the wrong man, it takes just one moment like this to significantly harm both a player’s confidence in himself, and the confidence in him from others (coaches, players, and fans), especially when it happens in the fourth quarter of a three point game.

This gets even worse as on the first two plays of the response possession, Rex throws two incompletions in a row. Now facing down third and long, and all of a sudden facing a win probability of only 38 percent, Rex has all the potential to lose his head again, and make another crushing mistake.

This good start to the season that Rex has going has the potential to implode right here, on this third and ten. That would fit with the ‘Rex Grossman sucks’ narrative, but does it happen?

No it doesn’t.

Despite being a player mostly remembered for his ability to lose his head and make poor decisions in big moments, and how we’ve just seen that this reputation is not entirely undeserved, Rex keeps his cool, and keeps his team alive.

On third and ten, Rex completes a 14 yard pass to keep the drive going. It eventually ends in a field goal and a one point deficit, and after the defence forces a fumble in Minnesota territory, Rex takes just five plays to take advantage of the short field and get into the end zone for a 19-16 lead that we wouldn't surrender.

Disaster has been averted, and the Bears are 3-0.

This performance wasn’t great. Negative EPA on the day is never a good thing, but it means something to Bears fans. When was the last time they had a QB that was able to actually rebound from a mistake? It’s typical for a Bears QB of this era to compound his mistakes until he’s totally taken his team out of the game. Rex didn't do that. He played very far short of great, but in the fourth quarter, after throwing one of the worst INTs in NFL history, he rebounded. He led his team to ten points in the final three possessions of a fourth quarter comeback victory.

Could Craig Krenzel have done this? Could Kyle Orton have done it? Of course not. This fourth quarter was tough to describe. It was not great, as it featured one of the worst offensive plays I’ve ever seen. It was not bad, as it featured ten points scored, every one of which were crucial to the team coming back and winning. The best way I can describe this quarter (and football game) is that it was very Rex Grossman. In this circumstance, that is a compliment, because Rex is better than everybody the Bears have had before him.

It's a good thing too, because next up on the schedule is the most important game of our season. In week four, the Bears host to the undefeated defending NFC conference champions, Matt Hasselbeck and the Seattle Seahawks.

I would love to say more about this game, but just like in Green Bay, we took a great game on paper and made it a snoozer. Just for kicks, the rush offence finally got out of the quicksand and played great in their forty plays, but they weren't necessary. Rex had this under control, generating 0.39 EPA/Play for the game. The Bears win this battle for NFC dominance 37-6.

To go along with Brett Favre and Jon Kitna (two names on a resumé that should not be scoffed at), Rex Grossman has just definitively outplayed Matt Hasselbeck.

Matt Hasselbeck was the best QB in the NFC last year. The 2005 NFC QB group is slim pickings, but that’s still 4th best in the NFL. If Rex outplay him this easily, he can do it to anybody.

It truly seems as if Chicago finally has their quarterback.

After another easy win over Buffalo, featuring another very good Rex performance, the Bears are 5-0. Four of those five wins have come by 20 points or more, and the Buffalo game was the third fourth quarter already that Rex didn't even have to play in.

Make no mistake. Rex Grossman is the driving force behind this success. Although it's been looking up recently, Chicago's rush offence was awful in each of our first three games. Relying wholly on Rex Grossman's arm for our offence, we still scored 26, 34, and 19 points in those games, including one of the best QB games of all time in week two. Aside from one bad throw in Minnesota (which was brutal. Don’t accuse me of understating how bad it was), Rex has been untouchable. He's been the best QB in the league.

*Record scratch*

Hold up. Hold up. Hold up.

I have a smart audience here. I know you're not just going to read me call Rex Grossman the best QB in a league featuring (to name a few) Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Drew Brees, and Philip Rivers, and just accept hat claim without evidence.

It's the truth, guys. Through the first five weeks of the 2006 NFL season, the Chicago Bears have the best QB in the league. Rex Grossman ranks first in EPA/Play, with his 0.317 just barely beating out Peyton Manning, and it’s not just results. His CPOE through five weeks also ranks fifth. His 4.5 nestles him nicely, right between Chad Pennington and Drew Brees, and his 114 sk%+ takes him way past Chad.

Do you see it?

Should Rex’s skill level put him on top of the results chart? Probably not, but there’s no reason he should be outside the top five. This is a third of the way through the year, and Rex Grossman is maintaining as a top five QB in the league, at least. Look at the names I said up there. Rex’s immediate company in the important results categories is Peyton Manning, Chad Pennington, and Drew Brees. These are legends of the game Rex is brushing shoulders with. He has real talent, even though some people choose not to remember it that way.

Do you know why people choose not to remember it that way? Because we’ve arrived.

We've arrived.

Do you remember where we've arrived?

If you’re familiar with the story of Rex Grossman’s 2006, this is the moment you’ve been waiting for. If not, you’re in for a real treat, because I’ve just given you all the context behind one of the most iconic moments in the history of the NFL.

We have arrived at the most memorable game of Rex Grossman's 2006 season, and one of the most memorable games in NFL history. We've arrived at (in my opinion) the reason that people refuse to take Rex seriously, despite everything I've told you about how he’s performed leading up to this moment. We've arrived at the infamous week six Monday night matchup against the Arizona Cardinals.

The context of this famous moment has been utterly forgotten in the years since it happened, but unbeknownst to most of you, I’ve just spent 4000 words filling you in. Dennis Green is the coach of a 1-4 Cardinals team, forced to play the us, coming off the stretch I just described to you. The stretch of four wins by three touchdowns or more out of five games. Dennis’s pass defence that would go on to rank 22nd in 2006 is faced with having to defend against the best pass offence in the league, led by the number EPA/Play QB in the league, Rex Grossman. It's no wonder why the Cardinals are two touchdown home underdogs.

The Cardinals take this doomed situation and convert it into a 17-0 lead over us at the half, and a 23-3 lead at the end of the third quarter. They are able to do it largely due to Rex Grossman committing an ungodly six turnovers and contributing an unbelievable -32.5 total EPA to his team throughout this game. If you throw an incomplete pass every time you touch the ball for a whole game, you will contribute more to your team than Rex Grossman did in this Monday Night Football game.

So why is Dennis so angry?

Despite Arizona's 20 point third quarter lead, a strip sack in the end zone, a second fumble return touchdown, and a Devin Hester punt return touchdown, all within the last 16 minutes (all of this around two fourth quarter turnovers from Rex) allow the Chicago Bears to get out of Glendale with a 24-23 win, in one of the most ridiculous NFL games in the league’s history.

When Dennis Green says ‘the Bears are who we thought they were,’ he is articulating that he knew in his heart that Rex Grossman's start was a fluke. He knew that Rex Grossman wasn’t the best QB in the NFL. He knew that Rex couldn't carry the Chicago offence all year like he had been in the first five games. He knew that if Arizona could shut down the Chicago rush attack, which they did, Rex would crack.

Dennis is so angry because despite all of that being true, he and his team still found a way to drop to 1-5.

That's all great. Thank you for the history lesson, but what does it have to do with Rex Grossman?

This is an article about people looking back on Rex's 2006, and remembering it as being much worse than it was. Dennis Green has just given the world a quote that they will use to denigrate and discredit Rex Grossman for the rest of his life. Looing back at football seasons that took place almost 20 years ago, people don’t remember the week to week grind. They don’t remember how Rex Grossman singlehandedly blew out the defending NFC champions just a couple weeks ago. They don’t remember Rex Grossman leading the league in EPA/Play a significant amount of time into the season. People hang on to things like this. The moments.

The Bears are who we thought they were.

Do you remember how Desmond Howard won a Heisman trophy (over much more deserving candidates) because he did a cool pose in the end zone? That’s the moment. Award voters remembered it when it came time to cast their ballots. This is the same for Rex, but in reverse. No matter how much I throw at you about Rex's elite start, about everything that is to come, that tries to dispute the dominant narrative, people will always remember that the Bears are who Dennis Green thought they were.

Make no mistake. This is probably the second worst quarterbacked game since the play tracking era began in 1999 (I talked about the very worst a couple months back, if you’re interested). Very few games in the history of the league even approach -32.5 total EPA, but it's still only one game. Don't let it occupy too much of your headspace. Allowing this one game to take up all the space in your mind is how you end up dramatically underrating Rex Grossman, and I don’t want you to do that.

As if to show how little we care about the debacle in Arizona, the Bears respond in our very next game with a 31 point win over San Francisco at home. Rex doesn't commit any turnovers, and generates 0.53 EPA/Play, before being taken out for the fourth quarter for the fourth time this year already. Once again, we’re dealing with the dichotomy of Rex Grossman. We’re half way through the season now, and we’ve seen enough to see that Rex is a great player. It’s only when bad Rex comes out that things begin to get scary, but with easy wins like this, it’s easy to overlook bad Rex, and as if moments like against Minnesota or against Arizona are blips.

They’re not.

In week nine at home against the Miami Dolphins and their sixth ranked defence, Rex implodes again. He commits another four turnovers (as well as two on downs), and contributes another -23.5 EPA, to singlehandedly lose our undefeated record to a quite bad 2006 Miami team, in brutal 31-13 fashion.

Wow.

What happened to this guy?

Through the first five weeks, Rex Grossman was the best QB in the NFL. Over the last three, he's had two of the worst QB performances in history, but with another elite game sandwiched in the middle. I’m not sure what to think. The Bears have won games this season that they wouldn’t have won in the Kyle Orton-Kordell Stewart-Craig Krenzel-Jim Miller-Shane Matthews era, but the Bears have just lost by 18 points to a bad team despite Joey Harrington generating -0.19 EPA/Play on the other side. This is a game the team would’ve won in prior seasons.

Chicago QBs (and any QB with such a consistently great defence) have a reputation for playing not to lose, so they say. What this phrase is actually supposed to mean I've never been able to figure out, but what we can all say with confidence is that it is the opposite of how Rex plays. Rex Grossman will never play not to lose.

Rex is going to keep trying, no matter how badly it goes.

As we've seen, it goes extremely badly sometimes. More badly than it has ever gone before for a QB who’s able to flash such talent, but we've also seen Rex not even have to play the fourth quarter four times already. We're only eight games into the season, and Chicago has won by 20+ points five times.

In the modern NFL, this playstyle is dead. It just is. Ever since Jameis Winston played with such a reckless style, and was exiled from the starting ranks for it, there are no Rex Grossman style QBs left anymore. Name me any QB in the modern game who can be described with the word ‘gunslinger.’ There just isn’t one left anymore. That's both a good and a bad thing. It’s good because there are no more implosions of a Brett Favre or Rex Grossman magnitude in the modern game, but it’s bad because it subjects us to having to watch every QB in the league playing not to lose for a majority of their plays.

To play the conservative modern style, there just isn't room for such high flying offences any longer. Jared Goff killed the league in 2024 with an average depth of target (aDoT) of 6.6 yards. That's deep into game manager territory. Patrick Mahomes has made three Super Bowls in a row playing conservatively at every step of the way. This is the norm in 2024.

Rex Grossman is a throwback to a completely different era of football, and he was a throwback even in 2006. He’s rocking an aDoT of 9.6 so far, through nine weeks of the 2006 season, good for sixth in the league, and despite all of the blow ups, that are beginning to happen with greater frequency, nobody can ever convince me this man is playing conservatively, and he deserves credit for that.

Partly due to Rex’s reputation that he’s already beginning to develop, the Bears go on the road to face the Giants as underdogs. Rex punishes the betting public for their treachery by murdering the Giant offence in an 18 point blowout win. Perhaps sensing he was back on track, bettors install the Bears as six point favourites when they stay in New York to play the Jets the following week. Rex rewards their faith with an absolutely horrendous -0.15 EPA/Play and 16 percent success rate, in a game that the Bears nevertheless win 10-0.

I’m going to do this bit again.

In all QB games with at least 25 drop backs, Rex Grossman’s personal success rate of 16 percent on this day makes this the 15th worst QB game of the play tracking era. This is the list of players who since 1999 have ever had a game this bad:

Blaine Gabbert, Bailey Zappe, Luke McCown, Chad Henne, Anthony Wright, Ryan Lindley, Clayton Tune, Tim Couch, Akili Smith, Jon Quinn (who?), Rob Johnson, Mark Brunell, Eli Manning, and Rex Grossman.

If your least favourite QB isn’t on this list, his worst game was not as bad as Rex Grossman’s worst. JaMarcus Russell never had a game this bad, and this is perhaps the ultimate representation of the dichotomy of Rex Grossman. Better than Patrick Mahomes’ best, and worse than JaMarcus Russell’s worst, both within ten weeks.

Nevertheless, with a defence the likes of the 2006 Bears’, this team is equipped to handle such a streaky player. I don’t think it needs to be said that of all the games on that list I just gave you, this is the only one where the horrendous QB’s team won the game by multiple possessions. This is a team that can stomach Rex’s bad days, in exchange for his good ones, on the condition that it’s not quite as bad as it was against Miami or Arizona.

Honestly, this is perhaps the best situation that Rex Grossman possibly could’ve landed in. Most of his awful blow ups are being covered up by the fact that they keep coming in wins.

Going back to the season, after back to back wins in New York over both the Giants and the Jets, the Bears are 9-1. Their reward for this is a scheduled loss.

Do NFL fans understand the concept of a scheduled loss? This is a known thing in the NHL and NBA, but I’ll explain it for any football fan that may not know. It's a given in both the NBA and NHL that when you play back to back road games, if they're both against good teams, you're essentially guaranteed to lose the second game. When the league schedules a back to back like this, it's called a scheduled loss.

As a Raptors fan, I remember a famous one being when the Houston Rockets had a back to back in Milwaukee and then in Toronto during their winning streak in the James Harden era that was getting close to breaking the all-time NBA record. Of course the second game, on the road in Toronto, ended their winning streak, and we had to endure a days of NBA chatter over whether scheduled losses ending these long (potentially record breaking) winning streaks is good for the game.

Back in the NFL, in the modern era, they've essentially abolished the concept of teams playing three road games in a row, in an effort to avoid scheduled losses. An NFL team playing their third road game in a row has an extremely low chance to win the game, regardless of the quality of the teams involved.

I bring all this up right now because by 2006, the scheduled loss has not been abolished yet. As a result, we get to stay in the Northeast for a third week in a row for another road game. This time, as the third leg of our road back-to-back-to-back, we get the New England Patriots.

There's an odd double standard in football. For every position except QBs and kickers, it's all about making up for your mistakes, but if you are a QB or a kicker, suddenly all mistakes are unacceptable. This is showcased in this week 12 game against the Patriots. Rex again commits four turnovers, but unlike Arizona, and unlike Miami, this time he makes up for his mistakes.

Despite the four turnovers, Rex ends up generating a flat 0 EPA/Play this game, which is about the best you can hope for if you have to commit four turnovers (click here to read about how great a QB can be while generating 0 EPA/Play). Rex repeatedly drove into Patriot territory all night long, and allowed us to run more plays than the Patriots (74 to 64) despite the turnovers.

While he did throw the interception to end the game as a 17-13 loss, Rex gave the Bears a chance to win this game. We must also remember that this game was designed to be a Bears loss in April when the schedule was made, before the season even started. Taking that into account, I think this was actually a fairly good performance. As proof, here is a list of QBs who had performances as bad or worse than Rex Grossman’s 0 EPA/Play against this 2006 Patriot defence.

Are you ready? There's some big names here.

David Garrard, Carson Palmer, Vince Young, Chad Pennington twice, Brett Favre, Aaron Rodgers.

Stop blaming Rex Grossman.

Now 9-2, but with our closest NFC rivals at 7-4, the pressure is off at this point. We can just coast until the first seed is ours, but ironically, this is the exact same position the Bears found themselves in last season, without Rex. After a 9-3 start, Chicago coasted to an 11-5 record and a first round bye, before being knocked out in the home playoff game.

That will not do this year.

After another atrocious performance (Rex, I'm trying to defend you, can we stop with the -20 total EPA stuff?) in what is nevertheless an easy win over Minnesota, it’s time to go to St Louis.

The Rams are 5-7, and we are 10-2, but we enter as mere six point road favourites. This is because of two factors. The first is the QB matchup. I love Rex Grossman, but even I won't try to claim he's better than Marc Bulger, one of the best QBs in the weak NFC of the 2000s in general, and especially 2006 in particular. The second is that the Rams are playing for their playoff lives. We’re playing for nearly nothing.

That shows once the game starts. For the first time all season, the defence is not there for Rex to rely on. They allow three scoring drives in the second quarter alone, although luckily one of them ends in a missed field goal, so we do manage to go into the half with a 14-13 lead.

This is not exactly season defining. Again, our 10-2 start in a weak NFC has already locked up everything you can lock up in the regular season, but it is eerily reminiscent of a week 14 loss last year, on the road in Pittsburgh, that began the Bears' spiral into a one and done playoff appearance. It doesn't seem like the defence can stop Marc Bulger. Obviously, this one point lead will not hold.

This puts Rex Grossman in the position of having to go shot for shot with one of the best QBs in the NFL. Earlier in the year we might have been able to get by this with this, but with how things have been going lately, this feels tenuous at best. You never know when bad Rex may show up again, but we don’t have any other choice. The rush offence is not getting it done. It’s Rex Grossman or nothing.

Don't ever tell me Rex Grossman wasn't a good NFL QB.

He responds to this pressure with three touchdowns and a missed field goal in our four second half possessions to put his foot on the Rams' throats, and end their playoff hopes with a 42-27 win. We’re back to the great Rex, as he generates 0.61 EPA/Play this game, and he picked a great time to do it, against one of the best offensive performances the defence will give up all year.

I know he had a really rough stretch in the middle of the season, but great Rex is still here. He's still capable of leading the Bears to these dominant blowout wins.

In week 15 against Tampa, Rex is forced to step up again, as this elite Chicago defence somehow gives up 0.23 EPA/Play and 31 points to a Tampa Bay Buccaneer offence with Tim Rattay at QB. No problem. He does it again. Rex throws for his only 300 yard game (a bit of a shallow stat, think of all those fourth quarters he didn't play) all year in defeating the Tampa Bay Buccaneers 34-31 in overtime.

These Bears are trying to lay down again, just like they did in 2005. This time, they have a QB who won't let them.

After a come from behind fourth quarter win in Detroit and a loss in an unimportant final game to the Packers, the 2006 regular season is over. In the end, we've gone 13-3. Three wins better than anybody else in the NFC, and our first year starter has finished somewhat strong. Bad Rex did make one final appearance in the season finale against Green Bay (the infamous game with two completed passes and four turnovers), but in general, he’s been able to stay away ever since the Minnesota game, which happened on December 3rd.

This is a tenuous life to live, but in a probabilistic sense, Rex generated negative EPA in just six games in the 2006 season. That’s not so bad. There have been Super Bowl winners who have played worse than that. I’m not trying to tell you Rex Grossman is a benefit to our championship chances, but I am trying to tell you that he’s not a significant hinderance either, unless bad Rex is going to show up again.

Chicago fans will live in fear of that possibility for the entire playoff run, but their only other choice is either Kyle Orton or Brian Griese, which is to say they don’t really have any other choice. It’s going to be Rex Grossman or nothing, which either means that we can win every game on the way to the Super Bowl by 20+ points, or we can lose spectacularly badly. It’s impossible to forecast.

The first hurdle on the way to the Super Bowl is the Seattle Seahawks, at home again. Remember the last time these teams played. In that game, Rex made Matt Hasselbeck look like Will Levis as the Bears won by 31 points. Using that as the precedent, this is bound to be an easy win. Right?

Not quite.

We come into this game as only four point favourites at home. Why this spread is so narrow, I cannot quite understand. Maybe it has to do with the fear of bad Rex. Maybe there's some residual belief that the Seahawks (who were so elite last year) are better than their 9-7 regular season record. Whatever the reason, we are getting no respect for our great 13-3 season. We'll have to earn it against the defending NFC champions.

Rex gets off to a hot start in this one. Two of our first three drives end in touchdowns. One is a 68 yard touchdown pass from Rex to Bernard Berrian. However, partly due to a Rex fumble, we’re only able to get a 14-14 tie out of this great start. After some back and forth, we do manage to score a touchdown in the two minute drill (something Rex hasn't been very good at this year) to go into the half with a 21-14 lead.

After a Seattle field goal to start the second half, and a drive killed by two devastating sacks (which normally hasn’t been a problem, even for bad Rex), Seattle scores another touchdown, and we fall behind 24-21.

No worries. Rex has driven the Bears all the way to the Seattle eight yard line to start the fourth. This should be at least a tie. In fact, Chicago is expected to score 5.3 points from this position.

We get none.

Rex throws an interception on the five yard line to bail the Seahawks out of trouble. When the defence immediately forces another turnover, Rex turns first and ten from the 31 into an unbelievable punt from the Seattle 36 with two incomplete passes and a delay of game penalty on the field goal operation. This second one is not Rex's fault, but still. Two trips to the Seattle 30, and no points. That's the kind of thing that ends seasons.

It isn't going to end this one though.

After a Seattle punt that sees a Devin Hester touchdown nullified by a return penalty, Rex drives the Bears all the way to the 23 to kick the game tying field goal. After yet another stop, the Bears get a golden chance to win this game with two minutes left, but can only manage three plays and a punt. This game is going to overtime.

After Seattle wins the coin toss, hearts are in mouths in Chicago, but there's no danger. Seattle can get as far as their own 48 before punting to us, and it's academic from here. Overtime ends on one 30 yard pass from Rex as we immediately kick the field goal that wins this game 27-24, and sends us to the NFC championship.

This is a game where the stats will absolutely lie to you if you let them. It reminds me of Lamar Jackson in his 2019 playoff game against the Titans. The data tells me that Rex generated negative EPA/Play this game, but I can see that the Bears were in Seahawks territory all night. I know there were two killer turnovers. I also know we went deep in Seattle territory and came out with no points twice in a row in the fourth quarter, but Rex bounced back to lead us on the game tying field goal drive, and then on the game winning field goal drive. That's what I want my QB to do in the playoffs.

Was this a great game for Rex? No, but could Brian Griese have done this? Could Kyle Orton have done it? I just don’t think so, which means Rex is what the Bears have been looking for all along. Would they love to have Peyton Manning on the team? Of course they would. Every team would, but you can win playoff games with Rex Grossman playing QB for you.

We just did.

Now that his first playoff win is behind him, the sky is the limit for Rex. He’d better be up for the challenge too, because our opponents in the NFC championship game are the New Orleans Saints, led by their major offseason acquisition, Drew Brees.

After a first quarter of nothing but the teams trading three and outs, the Saints finally crack. They fumble the ball and give it to us at their own 36. From here, Rex only has to complete one pass to get the ball to the Saints' one yard line. At this point though, we hit the wall. Rex throws two incomplete passes, and we only get three points. After another immediate Saints turnover, the Bears only let Rex throw once on the ensuing possession, and we settle for three again.

After yet another quick Saints punt, we again go straight into their territory, mostly thanks to a 30 yard Rex pass, but yet again have to settle for three inside the Saints' ten yard line. We now have a 9-0 lead, but I wouldn't recommend continuing to test this with Drew Brees on the other side. Thankfully, we do finally score a touchdown on our next possession, without Rex having to throw, and go into half with a 16-7 lead.

Things look bad coming out for the second half. We can do nothing but go three and out for all of the third quarter. All of this while Drew Brees is getting more and more looks at our defence. Luckily for Rex, it holds for long enough for him to finally get his game going. We score a touchdown on a great Rex drive to begin the fourth quarter to take a 24-14 lead, and it's all over from here. Rex only has to throw twice more in the rest of this game, as the Saints can't stop our rush attack. Drew Brees never does get it figured out, and we win this game 39-14.

This is another game where Rex's stats were not great. A 44 percent completion percentage really hurts. It's what's causing all of these three and outs, but still. Think of all the times I mentioned that the Bears were deep in Saints territory. You can't do that if your QB is as useless as people like to remember Rex Grossman being.

My favourite barometer of how many good rush looks a team is getting from the opposing defence is how many times the rush offence is able to touch the ball, and we were able to hand the ball off 45 times in this game. The rush offence generated 0.17 EPA/Play this game, and it’s not a great rush offence. That says to me that almost every alignment in this game was a great run look. That can't happen unless the defence greatly respects the threat of the pass. The Saints were determined not to be beaten by Rex Grossman, and to their credit, they weren’t. Rex generated -0.25 EPA/Play in this game.

The problem with this philosophy is that there’s a price to pay for ignoring the run game like the Saints did. In this case, they lost the NFC Championship by 25 points.

The New Orleans Saints respected Rex Grossman, to the point where they ended their own season trying so hard to stop him. Why can't you feel the same way?

I can't believe we've made it this far. We've made it through all the trials and the tribulations. All the double digit wins. All the fourth quarters Rex didn't have to play. One of the best games in history against Detroit. Being the best QB until week five, only to become who we thought he was and have two of the worst performances of all time against Arizona and Miami. Bouncing back from those bad games to carry the Bears through their late season defensive lapses. Winning two playoff games despite generating negative EPA/Play in each of them (although I think it's a bit misleading). All of it has led us here, to Super Bowl 41.

We’re coming into a game as underdogs for only the third time all year, but I think there’s a real chance to win this. The Bears aren't getting the best team in the league in the Super Bowl game. Instead, we're getting the 12-4 Indianapolis Colts. The Colts do have the best QB in Peyton Manning, but our defence just totally locked down the second best QB in the league last week. Who's to say they can't do it to the best? Even if they can’t shut down Peyton Manning, we still have our offence. As long as bad Rex doesn't show up, we should be able to have a field day with the Colts' 31st ranked defence.

Did I lay the foreshadowing on a bit too thick?

In the Super Bowl, everything falls apart. After a first quarter injury, we have to go the whole game without Cedric Benson, leaving us without our top RB. We try to run the air out of the ball the same way we did against New Orleans, but without our top back, in conjunction with the Colts just not respecting the pass in the same way the Saints did, it doesn’t work.

Rex punishes the Colts’ ambivalence to the pass by completing 70 percent of his passes, something he's only done only three times all season, but at only 8.25 yards per completion, it's no use. Everybody knows Rex is going to begin pressing eventually, and he does, eventually blowing up again, finishing this game with -20.8 total EPA. Bad Rex has made one final appearance, at the worst possible time. We lose the Super Bowl 29-17, and Bears fans are left to think back on this Super Bowl until the end of time, dreaming that they could've won had they had competent QB play.

I have news for them. The Bears didn't lose this game because they had Rex Grossman at QB.

I know about the -20.8 total EPA. I hear you screaming that he had three turnovers in this game, but only two of them were of any importance, and one of them was a botched snap as a result of this game being played in a rainstorm. Peyton Manning had just done the same thing. If Peyton Manning can do it, I refuse to blame Rex for that. You can. I won't begrudge you for it, but I'm not going to. We're left with one true turnover, and while his pick six in the fourth quarter was back breaking, it isn't why Chicago lost this game.

The Bears lost this game because we allowed the Colts 41 rushing attempts and almost 40 minutes of possession time. Indianapolis ran 81 plays in this game, compared to our 50. That is your answer. You just can’t overcome that kind of TOP difference. There are only two quarterbacks in the 21st century that I've known to regularly be able to overcome play count deficits that big, so unless the Bears had Daunte Culpepper or Aaron Rodgers on their side, they weren't going to win this game. Both were hardly even in the league at the time (Daunte was battling knee injuries, Aaron was rotting on the bench in Green Bay), so I guess we're out of luck aren't we?

Stop blaming Rex Grossman.

That’s it then. I’ve reached my conclusion. I've stated my case in full to all the football fans out there. I have just one more thing left to do. I've got to address that big elephant that’s been in the corner of the room for the entire time I’ve been writing this article.

Why have I taken 9500 words to defend a quarterback that finished the 2006 season with -0.019 EPA/Play (26th), -3.8 CPOE (31st), and 5.21 ANY/A (20th)? Why would I take the time out of my day to defend a QB this bad?

First of all, that’s the gimmick. Of course I’m going to find an excuse to be positive about Rex Grossman. Surely you all must know that by now, but what inspired me to write this was that I was doing another one of my web scraping opinion analysis initiatives (something I can do for fun, as a former CS student), which brought it to my attention that the internet thinks that 2006 Rex Grossman is the worst QB ever to start the Super Bowl.

I allowed it to personally offend me far more than it should have, because it's wrong. It's not wrong by a little bit either. The instant I saw that result, I could think of two QBs that were worse (2000 Trent Dilfer, 2015 Peyton Manning). With a few seconds of thought I found another (2007 Eli Manning), and upon further analysis, I found two that are at least in the same ballpark with Rex statistically (2003 Jake Delhomme, 2008 Ben Roethlisberger). If you allow for adjustments for the higher offensive environment, 2012 Joe Flacco joins this conversation too, and all of this is just since the play tracking era started. Don’t even get me started on players like 1982 David Woodley.

I will say this definitively, and with force. 2006 Rex Grossman is not the worst QB to make the Super Bowl. He's not even close to the worst.

I began to wonder why this was. Why do people think 2006 Rex Grossman is the worst QB ever to make a Super Bowl? I came to a simple answer. I have to use the U word. The same one every sports writer is so scared to use.

I think Rex Grossman is underrated.

I feel no need to rehash why. I already stated why over the course of the piece. People misremember Rex Grossman for two reasons. The first is that people hand on to the big moment of the Dennis Green interview. The second is bad Rex. 2006 Rex Grossman has three of the worst QB games of all time on his resumé.

That's the truth. I can't change it, but I can simply ignore it. If you just pretend that Rex Grossman never played against Arizona, or against Miami, or in the second Minnesota game, you come to the result that Rex Grossman generated 0.161 EPA/Play, on a -0.2 CPOE, if you exclude bad Rex’s three worst flare ups. This is basically a better version of 2023 CJ Stroud, who generated 0.124 EPA/Play on a CPOE not significantly different from zero.

That's it. That's the big one.

Everybody liked 2023 CJ Stroud. How come nobody likes 2006 Rex Grossman? It’s not the playoff wins. It’s not the division title. It’s not first round draft status. He and CJ have that all in common. What else is it then? The only thing I can think of is bad Rex. In Rex’s bad performances, he was so bad that he scared everybody away.

When you look up ‘inconsistency’ in the dictionary, Rex Grossman is what you see looking back at you. Nobody can deny that, but when it comes right down to it, Rex had a negative EPA contribution in only six of his team's 16 regular season games. That's the same as 2008 Ben Roethlisberger, and I haven’t seen 2008 Ben Roethlisberger talked about among the worst QBs ever to start the Super Bowl.

It’s the Rex Grossman dichotomy. Very rarely did he play good. He played great, or bad, or like the worst QB in NFL history. Those are the only three options. Even if it was great more often than it wasn’t, the bad games were so awful that they weigh the great ones down, so 2006 Rex Grossman goes in the record books as a negative EPA/Play, negative CPOE guy.

Like I said before, it only takes removing three of his games from history to raise his EPA/Play by .200 points, and make him a 0.161 EPA/Play guy. Should three games (even if they are three of the worst games ever played by any player) be enough to dictate the public’s opinion of a player to the extent that these three games have jaded the public opinion of Rex Grossman?

I don’t think so.

If you're a fan like me, who loves watching big plays, Rex Grossman should be one of your favourite quarterbacks. Completion percentage be damned, he was going to go for it, and even at that, 2006 Rex Grossman ranks in the bottom five percent of all seasons in expected completion percentage since the stat began being tracked in 2006, meaning his low completion percentages aren't as bad as they seem.

One of the last true gunslingers before the league phased out that style of play, Rex Grossman's star died quickly. In seven games for the 2007 Bears, Rex would generate positive EPA only once. Bad Rex was gone. There were no more -20 EPA performances, but great Rex was gone too, and he quickly would be relegated to backup duty. After one more okay season as a starter for Washington in 2011 (one that saves his 2006 from being one of the biggest one offs in NFL history), Rex Grossman would never play another game in the NFL.

I wonder what Rex Grossman is thinking right now. He has to know how good he was in 2006. He must know that he’s been underrated for a long time now. He and I now make two Rex Grossman believers out there in the world, but maybe with this article I've made a few more.

Fingers crossed.

Thanks so much for reading.