Jay Mariotti is Still a Jackass

It's been awhile since we ripped on Jay Mariotti here. Not because we stopped hating him (though he is our MySpace friend) but because we were just doing a real good job of avoiding his column.

But there it was on Christmas morning staring us in the face. Before we get into what he wrote yesterday, let's do a little background check on this. Just in the last month here are a few things he wrote concerning Rex Grossman and the Bears QB situation.

On November 27th after the Bears loss to the Patriots.

I have no interest in developing a young quarterback, or nursing his wounded inner child, over the larger priority of winning a championship. The question now becomes whether the Bears can keep suffering the mistakes of Rex Grossman and still win their first Super Bowl in 21 years. They have the defense to win it, the attitude to win it, the collective talent to win it and, certainly, the vehicle to win it via the spongy NFC.

There is no polite way to put this: Unless he is visited by the spirit of Joe Montana and miraculously improves his game in December, the Bears aren't winning a Super Bowl with Grossman. He is still a work in progress when the defense is the finished product. He has January heartbreaker written all over him, and while I'm hardly giving up on a kid with a live arm and an impressive will to prove us wrong, the timing seems askew. It's one thing if the Bears were just a decent team and Grossman's development was part of the growth curve. But this is a team that came to Gillette Stadium, against a Hall of Fame coach and state-of-the-art quarterback, and should have won. When the Bears haven't won a playoff game in a dozen years and have mastered the nausea of one-and-doneitis, you just don't want to see them go down with Wrecks Grossman, as a New York tabloid put it.

Not that Smith has the cojones to make the change to safety blanket Brian Griese. Before anyone even could ask about a quarterback change after the 17-13 loss, Lovie reaffirmed Grossman's status.

So from that column, we can deduce that Jay wants Brian Griese to get a chance at quarterback. Not a crazy stance considering half of the city felt the same way.

But let's keep going to three days later, November 30th when the Vikings Darren Sharper called Rex out for talking trash.

Let that last shot sink into your consciousness, Rex: MAKE SURE HE'S NOT THE GUY WHO KILLS THEIR SEASON FOR THEM. That's exactly what everyone in Chicago fears (Actually Jay, it was half of the city, but thanks again for telling us how we feel) and folks around the country are thinking after watching Grossman put up 4½ bad games in his last six. Sharper is trying to poison Rex's psyche, so the question becomes: How will he respond to this new twist of pressure, which is piled atop lingering doubts about whether he's capable of the job and if Brian Griese should be playing? After his debacle in Arizona, Grossman responded with a quality game against San Francisco's weak defense. Since then, he has reeked, with the exception of a good second half against the injury-depleted and turmoil-wrecked Giants.

Here's some of December 4th column titled "Blind Faith in Rex will Cost Lovie."

Let me give it to you real, Lovie Smith, as you stand up there in your ''NFC North Champions'' T-shirt and wonder snippily why the media aren't trading high-fives with you. If Rex Grossman remains your quarterback, your season goes splat in January. You won't see a contract extension, the city will call for a full-blown probe of your pedigree and years of Bears disgust will plummet lower than Lower Wacker Drive.

The question is how a 10-2 team resolves the palpable fear and imminent gloom that gripped Soldier Field every time Grossman threw the ball Sunday. The answer is Brian Griese, of course, but Smith still isn't budging off his stubborn and increasingly indefensible backing of a player gone stinking-rotten bad. Who says the Bears aren't trying to make history? They're apparently angling to be the first franchise to win a Super Bowl without a quarterback, noting how Grossman's passer rating against the Minnesota Vikings -- they of the NFL's second-worst pass defense -- resembled one of my college grade-point averages: 1.3. Actually, it might represent the median IQ of the coaching staff, which continues to stand by Rex even after he produced his fifth poor performance in his last seven and pushed his turnover number to 18 in those seven games with three more agonizing interceptions.

So it's still painfully obvious to us all that Jay wants Griese. But of course, he's not done yet. The next day, Jay wrote a column called "This City has it All--Except a QB."

Rex Grossman is the latest guinea pig. He was supposed to provide closure to the riddle, not perpetuate the problem, and maybe he'll figure it out someday. But for now, Rex ranks as the biggest of quarterbacking teases around here, a passer who started the season like an MVP and dissolved into a one-syllable euphemism for rotgut and community panic. We waited three years for Grossman to stay healthy, saw initial signs he was worth the wait, then watched him set back the passing profession a couple of thousand years. His rapid deterioration has become a national story, and when ESPN.com asked a simple poll question Monday -- Which QB should start for the Chicago Bears? -- around 300,000 had responded late in the night.

Naturally, the nation joins the vast majority of locals who want to see Brian Griese play (Notice how Jay uses a poll on ESPN instead of the one that the Sun-Times took? Also, notice how Jay thinks that 49% of the locals is a vast majority. That's how many voted for Griese to start.) and at least give the Bears a chance to win a Super Bowl, a shot they no longer have with Bad Rex. Given the embarrassing lineage in the last 10 years alone -- McNown and Hutchinson, Quinn and Krenzel, Stewart and Orton, Mirer and Stenstrom, a Moses who couldn't locate a receiver much less part the sea -- you'd think the Bears would be the first team to make a QB change. What's so hard about pulling the trigger these days, anyway? I've watched Bill Parcells, a future Hall of Fame coach, replace veteran Drew Bledsoe with young Tony Romo and look brilliant. I've seen the Jacksonville Jaguars push a high first-round pick, Byron Leftwich, to injured reserve so David Garrard can provide stability and consistency. I've seen Mike Shanahan, who wears Super Bowl rings, have the guts to realize he's going nowhere with Jake Plummer and gamble with raw rookie Jay Cutler.

But even in a league dictated by a desperate credo this season -- life is too short to suffer a stinky quarterback -- Halas Hall still isn't budging. Grossman will remain the starter Monday night in St. Louis, and when I refer to Halas Hall, it's a way to remind angry fans that Lovie Smith does have a boss. His name is Jerry Angelo, a general manager who has the power to strongly suggest a position change but still won't do so -- probably because so much of his professional reputation is locked into his decision to draft and groom Grossman. If they stick with Rex into the playoffs and he continues to play horribly, the boys risk intense public disapproval.

Jay then laid off of Rex for a few weeks, instead focusing on Devin Hester and ripping Tank Johnson. Notice how this also coincided with the fact Rex was playing well at the time?

But then Monday's Christmas column came.

Finally, on Sunday in Detroit, Brian Griese got his chance. He came in during the 4th quarter of the Bears 26-21 win. So Jay had to be pleased, right? He finally got what he'd been begging for over the last month.

For all the fretting about the Rexyll-and-Hyde quarterback, his fluctuating performances and his supermodel-body-fat passer ratings, he should have stayed in the game Sunday. How are we supposed to know if Rex Grossman can direct a fourth-quarter comeback drive in January if Lovie Smith doesn't let him try in December? This was the perfect situation for confidence-building and faith-healing, was it not?

Instead, what we have is the mysterious rekindling of a quarterback debate that had been assumed a dead issue. Riddle me this, Lovetron: If Grossman is your starter for the postseason, as you continue to insist, why risk even the slightest strains of another public controversy by inserting Brian Griese with the game in doubt? You say it was the plan all along, but if so, why did Rex say he knew nothing about it? Seems all you've done is play with Grossman's brittle psyche, give talk radio something to jabber about all week and create a story line after trying incredibly hard to avoid such intrigue all season.

I'm confused. Are the Bears standing by Grossman? Is Griese still in the picture? Could a two-headed monster await? What is this hocus-pocus from a conservative coach?

And that's just the first three paragraphs.

Can you imagine trying to buy Mariotti a Christmas gift? Everyday he's telling you how he wants a new Nintendo Wii. Seriously, he won't stop pestering you about it. He's leaving notes around the house, cutting out ads and sticking them on the refrigerator. Calling you at odd times of the day and screaming, "Nintendo Wii!!!!!!" into your ear when you answer the phone.

So Christmas morning comes, and Jay opens his gift. It's a Nintendo Wii.

"Noooooo!!! I wanted Playstation 3!!! I hate you!!!"

How on Earth did his parents resist the urge to smother him while he slept for so many years?

Thank God for blogs.