Most Bears QBs best position.  Prone.Wait.  What did you just say?

Who traded two number ones and their mediocre QB for Jay Cutler?

No, that’s funny, I thought you said the Bears did.

Huh?  No, that can’t be right.  The Bears haven’t had a real quarterback for 20 years.  And even he was made out of papier mache and had to be glued back together about once a month.

They haven’t had an adequately sized, talented quarterback for almost 60 years.

Yeah, 60.  Sid Luckman retired in 1950.

So the news that the Bears just traded for a 25 year old Pro Bowl QB who threw for 4500 yards and 25 touchdowns last year is a little disorienting.

Finally, the Bears obsession with dopes from Vanderbilt is going to pay off.

So let’s look at the trade.

The Bears send this year’s number one pick (18 overall) and next year’s number one pick (likely 32–you know the one that Super Bowl champs get), a third round pick this year, and the neckbearded wonder, Kyle Orton, to Denver for Cutler and a fifth round pick.

Given the Bears ability to draft in the first round lately (lately being since Jim Finks died), the loss of the two number ones doesn’t hurt them as much as teams who are good at it.  I know it’s faulty logic, but hang with me.  The third rounder was likely to end up being better.

Say the Bears go 11-5 next year (which, even with a real QB is a stretch given the horrendously awful receiving corps he’s got to work with), next year’s pick is in the 20s someplace.

But let’s look at it less analytically.  What does this mean for the Bears?  It means they have a real quarterback for the first time since…nearly forever.  QBs are the hardest thing to find in the NFL.  Teams don’t stay good without one.  Oh, sure every once and a while a team wins a Super Bowl without one, but the truly good teams, the ones who contend for several years all have one.  Add the Bears to that list.

But they have to do something at wide receiver.  The Bears current offensive strategy of sending Devin Hester as far down the field as he can run and then dumping a four yard pass off to Greg Olsen won’t work any better with Cutler than it did with Orton.

My first instinct was to remember all the times Hester got deep and Orton underthrew him only to have to settle for pass interference at best.  Now those balls will make it all the way to Hester.

Which doesn’t mean Devin will actually catch them, of course.

The Bears sniffing around future Hall of Fame tackle Orlando Pace this week gave me some hope.  They were pretty much set on drafting an offensive lineman in the first round with that 18th pick, but if they signed Pace they could do something else.  This is something else.

The Bears should be able to piece together a solid line, and they’ve got a good running back and two good tight ends.  Plus, they have one threat at wide receiver (not Earl Bennett).  So they might only be one wide receiver away from a real, live, offense.

Dare to dream.

Anyway, for having the balls to do this, you have to ready a shirtless hug for Jerry Angelo.  In his postmortem on the season he said that the Bears had “to get the quarterback position right.”

Looks like he meant it.

(Now, if the Bears can keep the diabetic Cutler off the sauce it’ll be all the better.)