Chicago fans are going to criticize Rex Grossman and call for his head — or at least his immediate replacement — until Brian Griese sees the lineup. Or Grossman makes up for things with a string of huge games.

But after watching Sunday night’s game against the Cowboys, a game in which you might think the Bears were destroyed based on the final score, 34-10, I feel it incumbent upon myself to tell the whole story. If you look a little closer, you might notice that the Bears were hanging with Dallas’s offense until the fourth quarter when Dallas would score 17 unanswered points (7 of which the direct result of a Grossman interception).

Here’s the thing: it’s not all his fault. The Bears fumbled this offseason when they let Thomas Jones go. His running last season kept Chicago out of jams and kept pressure off Grossman. The Bears lost their running game when they lost Jones to New York. His 1210 yards on the ground last season were crucial, and it’s becoming apparent that Cedric Benson and Adrian Peterson are not the 1-2 punch the Bears hoped they’d be. Their combined rushing average is just over 3.4 ypc and neither had scored a touchdown this season prior to playing Dallas.

Remember, too, that although he’s 27 years old, he’s essentially in the same developmental stage as Matt Leinart. Grossman hasn’t had the opportunity to practice those three years he missed because of injuries. Had he done so we might see a completely different quarterback.

This isn’t to say Grossman is without fault. Hey, he’s got problems playing quarterback. No doubt about it. He’s the most immobile quarterback I’ve ever watched and he makes questionable decisions when his immediate target is covered.

But Sunday night he found open targets. Bernard Berrian dropped several crucial passes, throws that were on the money. Once he didn’t catch the ball with his hands. The result was a ball that bounced off his shoulder pads and was incomplete. It was a pass that would have landed Chicago inside the 20, deeper perhaps.

And Grossman isn’t good playing from behind, especially when he knows that his running backs aren’t going to pick up necessary yardage. Hey, 3rd and 4 is a lot easier than 3rd and 12. And a lot of Chicago possessions ended like that. That’s why, in the fourth quarter, he threw a poor pass Muhsin Muhammad’s way — he was under pressure and he threw the pass that essentially put the nail in the coffin for Chicago.

If Lovie Smith does what’s expected Wednesday, if he announces Brian Griese is the team’s starter, he admits that Grossman was a mistake. But more than that, the Bears have to start over. They have to rebuild. They have to draft another quarterback — that’s not been the front office’s strong point, ever — and hope he develops. And there are no guarantees Griese will play better than Grossman; he’s a journeyman backup quarterback that has been rejected by 3 teams already. That’s the risk Chicago faces. They need to consider whether they want to win now and develop a quarterback later or continue to grow with Grossman. It’s a more complicated decision than you might think, and that’s what has kept Lovie Smith from pulling the trigger and inserting Griese into the lineup.

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