Two Teams in Search of Single Strong Arm

The Chicago Bears will open the season Sept. 14 against the New York Giants in Super Bowl XXI 1/2.

They will do so without Jim McMahon, the only quarterback who didn’t play lousy in Saturday’s Chicago vs. Irwindale exhibition game.

McMahon didn’t play.

“The arm’s not loose at all,” said the guy who pedals motorcycles and peddles tacos. “(The doctor) told me it’ll be at least another month.”

So, injured reserve, the National Football League’s answer to the disabled list, awaits McMahon, the only man in America who spends more time injured than Mike Marshall.

The Bears, champions of Super Bowl XX, will have to use somebody else at quarterback when they play the Giants, champions of Super Bowl XXI, in their super-duper season opener.

That somebody evidently will be Mike Tomczak, one of six quarterbacks who, on the whole, did their jobs pretty well Saturday--until they left the huddle.

Chicago used three quarterbacks, and Irwindale also used three. There is no truth to the rumor that the best of these six will advance to next month’s Punt, Pass & Kick national finals.

At least one mystery was cleared up. We finally know how many quarterbacks the Raiders intend to carry on their roster to start the season.

None.

It is a crying shame that Rusty Hilger, Marc Wilson and Steve Beuerlein are such nice guys, because it makes us feel guilty about calling the Raiders the only team in the NFL with three third-string quarterbacks.

As for the Bears, if they think they are going to win another Super Bowl without McMahon at quarterback, they also probably think that Magic Johnson and the Lakers are going to lose the pro basketball championship to Michael Jordan and his backup group, the Jordanaires.

Without McMahon, the Bears have trouble completing passes in pregame warmups.

Somehow, they managed to score more points than the Raiders in their final exhibition game, 20-17, but only because Irwindale’s sad-sack quarterbacks delivered 12 completed passes in 60 minutes.

The game was decided in the final second, thereby saving the Raiders the embarrassment of going into overtime and completing 12 passes in 75 minutes.

Before the game, most of us were under the impression that the Bears were better off at quarterback than the Raiders. Heck, most of us were under the impression that Northwestern was better off at quarterback than the Raiders.

Even without McMahon, the most famous quarterback ever to have started 46 games, the Bears were supposed to be the team with quality quarterbacks all over the place. They were Quarterbacks R Us. They had five of them. They had enough quarterbacks to start one every quarter and still have a fresh one for sudden-death. They had so many quarterbacks, they were thinking about holding a garage sale.

The Bears were the most talked-about team in the league after the college draft, because they drafted Jim Harbaugh out of Michigan when they already had McMahon, Tomczak, Steve Fuller and Doug Flutie. All the Raiders could do was lick their lips and hope Mike Ditka might mail one of those quarterbacks to Tom Flores, care of Federal Express. Jim McMahon left-handed was better than anybody Irwindale had.

Alas, it turns out the Bears have quarterback problems, just like the Raiders. The Giants have Phil Simms, the Redskins have Jay Schroeder, the Rams have Jim Everett and the Bears have the same thing the Raiders have.

Running backs.

Ditka didn’t sound concerned after Saturday’s game--which, by the way, shot straight to the top of the charts as Worst Exhibition Game of All Time. Even Ditka, once his postgame press conference was over, turned to a friend and said, “Lousiest game I’ve ever seen.”

The Chicago coach still has faith that Tomczak is better than everybody thinks, that Harbaugh will develop into a fine quarterback once he learns the system, and that McMahon will return to the starting lineup one of these years.

What he wants for the time being is consistency. “The single most important thing in life is consistency,” Ditka said. “It’s not the guy who hits a home run and then strikes out the next 21 times up.”

That’s being a little premature, coach. Bo Jackson doesn’t show up for at least another month.

Maybe by the time the Bears finish the regular season, McMahon will be playing again. By then, of course, Jackson is supposed to be playing for the Raiders. And the Bears and Raiders will end the season playing one another, Dec. 27 at the Coliseum.

An equipment kid mentioned that to McMahon on the way out Saturday.

“I hope I’ll have a uniform on then,” McMahon said.

The people holding tickets to that game hope so, too. If McMahon’s not playing by then, the Bears and Raiders might as well not even bother using a ball.