Bears fans know the name Ron Wolf well. He was the architect of a decade of sorrow in the 1990s as general manager of the Green Bay Packers. He completely flipped the script on the entire rivalry back in those days and it was because he seemed to have the magic touch at quarterback. His trade to acquire Brett Favre from Atlanta remains one of the greatest steals in NFL history.
This isn’t even counting some of the other quality passers he drafted during that period. Mark Brunell and Matt Hasselbeck would both go from being Favre backups to three-time Pro Bowlers elsewhere. Wolf had a certain philosophy about drafting quarterbacks. It involved trying to draft one every year and putting them under a good coaching staff.
However, he must have some sort of secret. He must know the key to finding the good ones, right? As a matter of fact he does. He said as much during an interview with the MMQB back in December.
“It’s blind luck,” Wolf said. “If I knew how to put together a quarterback, I’d have my own island somewhere.
“People would come to me, show me tape, and we’d discuss this and that. There’s just no question it has always been a difficult position to evaluate. When I was growing up, when the Colts came back to pro football in 1953, there were 12 teams in the league. I’d say seven had quarterbacks, and five didn’t. Now if you look at the 32 teams, maybe half have quarterbacks, and half don’t. Sometimes you don’t know what a guy has in college until you bring him in….”
Wolf explained his thought process by citing the many examples around the NFL. Tom Brady, the greatest ever going in the sixth round. Dallas reeling in Dak Prescott in the fourth round. Even his other quality finds in Brunell and Hasselbeck were fifth and sixth rounders respectively. What he’s saying is there is no magic formula to finding a great quarterback.
Subscribe to the BFR Youtube channel and ride shotgun with Dave and Ficky as they break down Bears football like nobody else.
Basically a team must do their evaluations, make the judgment call and hope they get lucky. Often the best way to find the good ones is to draft the position as often as possible until the solution is found. This is a key part of the approach that Bears GMs have said they wish to do but to date have decidedly ignored.
