Rams Give Harbaugh the Time of His Life : Bears: What cracked rib? Chicago quarterback picks defense apart with 248 yards passing and also runs for a touchdown.

The caller to the Chicago radio sports talk show Sunday was adamant: The Bears were never going to be a serious Super Bowl contender with Jim Harbaugh at quarterback.

“If they can’t trade for a competent quarterback, they should just turn the ball over to (rookie Peter Tom) Willis and let him learn the ropes. Neither Harbaugh or (backup Mike) Tomczak have good enough arms to take us to the Super Bowl. No way.”

Obviously, this guy didn’t know that the Bears were a couple of hours away from playing the Rams, the passers’ panacea, the cure for a quarterback with sagging confidence, the team that made someone named Anthony Dilweg look like Johnny Unitas on opening day.

Sunday night at Soldier Field, it was Harbaugh’s turn. The Bears’ quarterback--wearing a flak jacket to protect a cracked rib--completed 18 of 25 passes for a career-high 248 yards and two touchdowns during Chicago’s 38-9 romp over the Rams. He even ran for a touchdown on a 12-yard quarterback draw.

And he didn’t play in the last half of the final quarter.

“Right now, this feels like the best game I’ve ever had in my whole life,” Harbaugh said. “I’ve always had confidence in my ability and I feel good for the whole team, but I feel pretty happy about this personally.”

Still, the guy’s not going to make anyone forget Bear great Sid Luckman.

Last week, Chicago Coach Mike Ditka said the Bears don’t ask Harbaugh to “do anything he can’t do.” During the Bears’ 24-10 loss to the Raiders, for instance, that meant Harbaugh rarely was asked to do anything more than get sacked by Greg Townsend.

But the Rams (1-4) are now the Raiders of the Lost Cause, and when you’re playing against their no-need-to-rush-because-they-don’t-have-a-pass-rush defense . . .

“Jim knows where his shortcomings are and he works hard to improve them,” Ditka said. “Maybe he’s not as good as others at doing this and that, but there’s no shortcomings with his heart. He’s got the heart of a champion.”

And, given enough time--like the five or more seconds he sat in the pocket perusing the end zone before finding Anderson for the Bears’ first touchdown--Harbaugh has the arm of a champion, too. He repeatedly had the time to pick and choose and he usually made the right decision.

He struggled a bit in the early going, completing three of his first six passes. But then he found a groove--not to mention some huge crevices in the Rams’ zone--and completed nine in a row after that.

Harbaugh matched superstar Boomer Esiason by guiding his team to a 21-0 lead over the Rams. Then he one-upped the Cincinnati quarterback, engineering a nine-play, 70-yard drive that put the Bears on cruise control with a 28-0 lead.

Asked if he thought Harbaugh had it in him, Ram defensive tackle Doug Reed shrugged and said, “Sure, when you give him that much time. I think I could’ve completed those passes if I had that much time. And I’m sure no one figured Doug Reed had it in him.”

Those who remember Harbaugh’s first pro start--a Monday night game against the Rams in December of 1988--must have thought there was an impostor wearing No. 4 Sunday night. In that game, Harbaugh completed 11 of 30 passes and threw two interceptions.

“I’ll never forget that,” he said. “That’s not the way you want to have your first start go. This time, though, we had a great game plan. We used a lot of play-action passes because we knew they would be keying on our run.

“We threw on first down, second down, on third-and-short. I can’t say enough about the game plan, especially the early down passes.”

In the first half, the Bears converted all seven third-down plays. Things were going so well, in fact, that Harbaugh barely thought about the pain in his ribs.

“I just tried to block it out,” he said. “In the first quarter, after I took that hit (on the touchdown run), I pretty much knew I could handle it. It hurt a little bit, but it wasn’t anything that kept me from playing.”

He was playing against the Rams. Anything short of a full body cast couldn’t have kept him off the field on this evening.