You can’t help but think while watching them on a night like Monday against the Packers how good this team could be if it just had a quarterback who could rise even to the level of mediocre. This isn’t something new with the Bears.

The last time they had a competent quarterback was in the mid-1980s, when Jim McMahon was at the controls of the team’s only Super Bowl squad.

Before and since, Chicago has gone through more bad quarterbacks than any four teams in the league. There is no conceivable reason for that to be the case.

There have to be at least a dozen back-up NFL quarterbacks who are better than Kyle Orton or any of the other impostors who have called signals for the Bears over the decades. Where were they when Kerry Collins, the hero of Tennessee, was available? How do the Patriots find Matt Cassel? Why didn’t they take a shot at Kurt Warner?

It’s not just this year. The Bears have turned lousy quarterbacking into a perverse art form. Look at the guys they’ve had in just the last decade: Brian Griese, Orton, Rex Grossman, Chad Hutchinson, Craig Krenzel, Jonathan Quinn, Kordell Stewart, Henry Burris, Chris Chandler, Jim Miller, Cade McNown, Shane Matthews and Moses Moreno.

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The best of that bunch is Griese, and he’s in Tampa now backing up Jeff Garcia. I’ve no idea why the Bears traded Griese after the 2007 season. He must have been too good.

Keep going back and the list gets no more impressive and the names no more recognizable. Every year the Bears go into the draft and every year they come out without a decent starting quarterback. And every year they go into the season knowing that it’s all going to come down to defense and special teams.

You have to sit in awe that they’re as good as they are. Monday night, they showed again why their fans are so devoted to them.

They’ve turned winning ugly into an art form. You don’t have to enjoy watching it, but you have to admire it.

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