Family Feud

So, Browns’ rookie quarterback Baker Mayfield doesn’t like ex-coach Hue Jackson, and he’s happy to tell the world what a “fake” Jackson is.  Wow, Mayfield could pass for a Chicago Bear back in the day.

Before I was out of grade school even, I was familiar with belly-achin’ Bears.  There was HOF defensive end Doug Atkins, who didn’t seem to care much for coach George Halas, and ditto some guy named Mike Ditka.  Even Dick Butkus, the heart and soul of the organization, felt compelled to sue the team for what he considered medical negligence in the treatment of a chronically injured knee.  And let’s not forget Virgil Carter, like Baker Mayfield, a quarterback with a voice.

Carter was a 23-year old rookie out of BYU in the fall of 1968 when he took over from an injured Jack Concanon and led the Bears to a 4-1 run.  But the Bears—at least until recently—have never taken a shine to rookie quarterbacks, and so Concanon was back at the helm for the last game of the season with first place in the NFL Central Division on the line.  Naturally, the Bears lost 28-27, naturally, to a below-.500 Packers’ team.

The next season didn’t go so well for the Monsters, not at 1-13.  Carter was pulled from one of those games and said it would be pretty “chicken shit” if he didn’t get to play again.  The Bears being the Bears, they traded him to Cincinnati.  And the world was never the same.

The Bengals’ quarterback coach was a young Bill Walsh, who devised his vaunted West Coast Offense as a way to capitalize on Carter’s short-pass accuracy and smarts; in Chicago, Carter had earned a master’s degree in mathematics, and he taught some statistics’ courses at Xavier while with the Bengals.  Carter even led the three-year old franchise to its first-ever postseason appearance, a loss against the Super-Bowl bound Baltimore Colts.

If past is prologue, things could get interesting should Baker Mayfield keep popping off.