Gross Inequities

Rex Grossman is the new Terrell Owens. No, he's not riding a stationary bike, doing sit ups in his driveway, or lambasting his teammates through the media. But it seems that everywhere you look, on every ESPN segment and in every Sportsline article, Rex Grossman is being mentioned. I play a lot of fantasy football and I'm a verocious reader of everything pertaining to the game. And every day this week, on every fantasy football website, there has been an article discussing the heroics of the Bears' signal caller. So as Owens recovers from surgery and his team sits through their bye week, Rex Grossman, after 2 great games, is on the tip of everyone's tongue; normally a spot reserved for the enigmatic TO.

In the opinion of most, Grossman's torrid start should be considered an aberration and not an early glimpse of a Manningesque future. He's always hurt and has never had a game like he had in week 2. The doubters repeat the stale mantra of "we haven't seen enough" but I say, we've seen plenty. Yes, the first two games were against Green Bay and Detroit (2 defenses that no one is playing on their fantasy team) but there is a larger sample from which we can use to make an educated guess as to whether or not Grossman is for real. Two years ago, in his first season as a starter, the kid from Florida (a product of the Spurrier quarterback factory in Gainesville) broke his leg during a touchdown run in Minnesota. His season was over, but he showed flashes of competence. He was nimble in the pocket, made good decisions, and had a bazooka connected to his neck. I remember liking Rex. Then came the pre-season last year, and another injury that held him out for most of the season. What a savage ballet the Bears performed under Kyle Orton, barely keeping our heads above the water in every game he started, and we pined for someone more accurate - someone with moxy. Then, in a frigid December game at Soldier Field, Lovie made the half time call for the recently healed Grossman. The city was buzzing as he stepped on the field, and number 8 delivered. On his first pass play, Rex fired a 25 yard strike to Muhsin Muhammad. The crowd erupted, and everyone in my apartment flew off the couch in excitement, and if you looked closely you could actually see smoke trailing the ball in slow motion instant replay. All right, now we have a QB. He showed his poise in the playoffs, putting up 21 points against a tough Carolina defense - 21 points which, in almost every other game that season, would have been enough to win the game - but the prevailing mindset of everyone inolved in the pro game was "we haven't seen enough."

Fast forward to this week. Rex's numbers after 2 games: 38 for 53, 551 yards, 5 touchdowns, and 1 interception. And again, the pundits spew forth the same milk toast analysis, citing his inexperience and injury history. Listen, both of his injuries were nasty, bone breaking injuries, not a long series of hamstring issues, or finger issues, or shoulder problems that just wouldn't go away. No, they were freak incidents that caused catastrophic damage to his body. Steve McNair is injury prone, DeShaun Foster is injury prone, even Terrell Owens is injury prone. Rex Grossman is not injury prone, he's just had bad luck. So all of the talk about "he needs to stay healthy" seems extremely reduntant at this point. Of course he has to stay healthy, but so does every other quarterback.

Eric Karabell is a fantasy sports analyst for ESPN. I read his articles a lot, and I used to actually take his advice, but the past few years have taught me about how stretched his knowledge of sports is. I'm not implying that he's misinformed or just plain stupid about sports, but he's asked to know so much about so many different sports, that you can't call him an expert on any given fantasy game. This became blatantly obvious this year, when he picked the Bears to miss out on even a wild card birth in the NFC. In arguably the weakest division in football, in a watered down NFC, Karabell thought the team with the best defense in all of football last year wasn't going to make it to the playoffs. And he's still down on the Bears, picking the Vikings to win this week. He's also hopped on the Grossman bashing bandwagon. What all of this tells me is that he's never seen Grossman play. I truly believe this is the case. Because Grossman has shown that he's extremely intelligent and he's shown that he's a leader. He has the physical tools (a cannon for an arm and good legs) and he has the swagger you need as an NFL quarterback. And it even looks like he has solid weapons around him. For years, we in Chicago have waited for this moment, and we watched in awe as it actually happened. We saw a kid become a man. Too bad no one else in the country did.