As Ryan pointed out this morning, the Bears are currently wrestling with whether or not they should pay Kyle Orton long-term money. After all, he did take a while to steal the starting job away from Rex Grossman. (Although, really, can’t we fault the Bears for that as well?) Sure, it would be somewhat risky, but then again, Orton is kind of playing out of his mind this year.

And as MDS pointed out at FanHouse today, he was actually better than most of us realized — or the stats said — during Sunday’s win against the Vikings.

Marty Booker dropped what should have been a 14-yard touchdown pass at the start of the second quarter. He also dropped what should have been a 24-yard touchdown pass late in the second quarter. And Desmond Clark fumbled what should have been a 36-yard touchdown pass at the 1-yard line.

So what would Orton’s numbers have looked like if his receivers had held onto the ball on those three plays? He would have had two more completions, 39 more yards and three more touchdowns, meaning he would have gone 23 of 32 for 322 yards, with five touchdowns and no interceptions. That’s a passer rating of 143.5, which would have been the best passer rating in the NFL on the week.

So, yeah, that’s right Chicago front office. Your boy — against the in-division and stout-defensively Vikings no less — was basically the best quarterback in the NFL on Sunday. If, you know, you had the smarts to surround him with some people that could catch the ball.

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A veteran of the Chicago beat reporting scene, David Schuster regularly writes about the sights and sounds of Chicago sports from the press box and locker room for MOUTHPIECE Blog.

Sunday marked the beginning of the split doubleheader season. No, not baseball’s day/night twin bill, but rather the Bears playing in the afternoon and the Blackhawks playing at night. No doubt many fans took in both contests and were fortunate to see victories by both. A few of us in the media also attended both games and we have our own stories to share.

The Bears played one of their most zany and high-scoring games in a long, long time. They ended up prevailing 48-41 against the Vikings. Afterwards, I caught up with Marty Booker. After interviewing him we started talking about a mutual favorite subject — boxing. Booker watched Saturday night’s fight between Bernard Hopkins and Kelly Pavlik and admitted that Hopkins upset victory gave him extra motivation. The reason being that Hopkins (43 years old) easily beat the younger Pavlik who is just 26. Booker himself was playing vs. much younger players Sunday and he ran away from them on his touchdown run like they were standing still. Call it a big weekend for the older guys.

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