The Kyle Orton Era — an unlikely yet awesome, neckbeard-filled time in the history of Chicago football — is now officially on hold for a month. That’s because yesterday, he suffered what some “experts” immediately recognized as a high ankle sprain.

As Ryan noted, Orton’s departure made way for the second most celebrated backup QB in the NFL (behind Mittens, natch) in the form of Rex Grossman, who stepped into the game with the Bears losing to the Lions … and somehow mounted a comeback.

So, a win over the hapless Lions is kind of nice. A loss would have been fairly devastating, of course, but even a comeback that involved Grossman against Detroit has to be taken in context and examined per the future, in order to have any sort of reality check against what the Bears can accomplish this season.

See, the NFC is, how do you say, Beasty? There are two wild card spots. And already, Washington and Philadelphia appear to have a head start on them, with Carolina and Tampa duking it out for a similar position. In the West, it’s Arizona and that’s basically it, with really no WC implications.

And because of the importance of staying competitive in the increasingly  heated card race, this four-game, at minimum, stretch is incredibly important for the Bears. And it could (read: will) be difficult for Grossman to dominate against the Titans and Packers, the Bears’ next two opponents. An Orton-less win against the best team in the NFL seems like a pretty big stretch at this point, especially with the way Tennessee stuffs the run. But if Matt Forte can do what he did on Sunday (shred the defense) against the Packers and Rams, then a 2-2 stretch while Orton is gone is certainly feasible.

Actually, scratch “feasible” and let’s plug in “required.” Losing to the Titans would be one thing, (and expected really) but Grossman has to at least have some sort of semi-decent game in order to keep a lingering air of confidence for matchups against the Vikings and Packers, one of which is an absolute must win. Assuming the Bears can handle the Rams, and they should, that makes 2-2 the bare minimum that latest Grossman experiment can produce.