The consensus on Griese is that he’s nothing spectacular, but that he won’t “lose” a game for you with poor decisions. For some reason, the mainstream media doesn’t like to crunch numbers when evaluating a decision like this. They’ll find five guys to get quotes from, then they’ll run the quotes.

Some people will say good things about Griese. Some people will say bad things about Griese. Some people will say the Bears should have stuck with Grossman. Some people will say this was long overdue.

That’s what the media calls balance these days. They don’t bother looking anything up. They don’t even worry about the truth! They just find people with different perspectives and run the quotes.

Anyway, the stats paint a very clear picture of the differences between Rex Grossman and Brian Griese. The former is a guy who never established that he was an NFL caliber starter even though he was on a great team. It took a special set of circumstances to keep him in the lineup. Griese has earned the label “journeyman” by having jobs in a few cities, and posting generic stats.

CAREER NUMBERS

• Griese: 84.5 passer rating, 104-80 TD/Interception ratio
• Grossman: 69.5 passer rating, 28-32 TD/Interception ratio

Even with the explosion of “fantasy” football leagues, the context for stats like these isn’t that well known. In a nutshell…quarterbacks at 90 or higher in passer rating are stars. Quarterbacks in the 80’s get the job done but aren’t usually stars. Quarterbacks in the 70’s are getting booed by the local fans, or are very young players still learning the ropes. Quarterbacks in the 60’s are either rookies, or franchise mistakes. There are more TD’s than interceptions in the NFL. So, being +24 as a 32-year old would clock in at average or a little below. Having a negative ratio like Grossman’s just isn’t acceptable. Most guys aren’t allowed to do that very long.

It’s a little unfair to judge the two careers because Grossman is still relatively inexperienced. He’s been around for awhile, but he’s only played in 26 games. Conveniently, Griese’s stat page at NFL.com shows that he played 25 games in his first three seasons on the league.

Here are the TD/Interception ratios on a level playing field:

• 28-32 for Grossman in his first 26 career games
• 33-19 for Griese in his first 25 career games

The slam dunk continues. Griese was better as a youngster than Grossman was at the same stages of the learning scale. Griese didn’t really elevate much from there. He was +14 on the ratio in those first 25 games, and sits at +24 now with three times as many appearances.

Bottom line, Griese is generic. Grossman was never as good as generic, and was on a career path that suggested he wasn’t likely to get there. In other words, Griese was never as bad as Grossman was! He’s very unlikely to be right now.

How should handicappers deal with this? Griese isn’t likely to post Pro Bowl stats as a starter. But, he is likely to be an upgrade. He’s better than Grossman across the board, and represents a step up in class from poor to generic. It’s odd to think about lifting a team in your power ratings or expectations when a backup takes over. In this case, it may well be justified.

The Bears hoped Grossman was going to develop into something special. The evidence now is that he wasn’t even going to develop into somebody as good as Griese. Why sit the better guy on the bench? The move had to be made.

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