Chicago Bears quarterback history is filled with occasional rays of lights lost in a sea of sadness. Nobody they’ve employed can be called a franchise-caliber guy in the past seventy years. Jim McMahon, Jay Cutler, and Mitch Trubisky all flirted with that status but failed to reach it for various reasons. Yet even amidst the extended down periods, there have been some really fun stories. Few are better than Jim Miller.
A former 6th round pick, he latched on with the Bears in 1999. Most figured he’d be nothing more than a backup at that time. After all, the team had just selected Cade McNown out UCLA with the 12th overall pick. Expectations were he’d be the centerpiece of a new era in Chicago football. Somebody they could build a contender around.
It didn’t take long to realize those expectations were misplaced.
From the outset, it was pretty clear McNown was missing something. He had the athleticism and a decent arm but he didn’t come across as somebody who was going to dissect NFL defenses on a weekly basis. One person who recognized that almost from the jump was Miller himself. He admitted as much to Adam Jahns of The Athletic in an outstanding interview about his career.
“I don’t want to say this and sound like I’m being cocky or anything (but) I felt that I was better than Cade McNown,” Miller said. “I felt that I was the best quarterback on the Bears and I just thought it would show itself. I just really believed. I understood the politics of it. They drafted Cade. But I felt I beat him and Shane Matthews out in camp. I really did. And I think everybody on the team did also. But sometimes it takes time. It needs to show itself. It needs to reveal itself. And I finally got to play.”
That says a lot when a former 6th round pick and journeyman backup realized he’s better than a 1st round pick by the end of training camp. It underscores just how colossally the Bears had screwed up with that pick. McNown was the fifth quarterback off the board in that 1999 draft. They’d had an opportunity to take future Pro Bowler Daunte Culpepper at #7 overall but elected to trade back to #12 with Washington. Culpepper ended up going to Minnesota at #11.
Another in a long line of awful QB evaluations by this team.
Jim Miller had what McNown was missing
While McNown may have had the advantage in athletic talent, it didn’t seem to matter. One of the critical traits of a good quarterback is the ability to unite a locker room. Get guys to play hard for you. McNown never came across as that guy. He wasn’t a leader. That is where Miller separated him from everybody else. He had the charisma and intelligence to reach everybody on that roster regardless of what position they played.
It’s why McNown found himself on the bench by the second half of the 2000 season and was traded before the start of 2001. He never even reached a third season with the team. That same year, Jim Miller claimed the starting job outright and ended up going 11-2. Chicago went 13-3 overall and won the division. Their first playoff berth in seven years.
Sadly his story didn’t get a happy ending either.
Miller was injured in their subsequent playoff loss to Philadelphia. The shoulder issue he developed ended up requiring multiple surgeries to fix. He was never the same after that day. Another of those big what-ifs in Bears history. Would they have drafted Rex Grossman in 2003 if that hadn’t happened? There is no way to know. If nothing else, it would’ve been nice if the guy had been in the scouting depart prior to them drafting McNown in the first place.