Mike Mulligan

And so at some point during the play, the quarterback's not looking at that protection anymore.

And he's trusting the center to be able to make any adjustments or changes to protect him and his well-being and safety.

And so that trust is not something that you just sign up for.

That's something that's built during training camp.

It's built during training.

the battles that you go through on Sundays.

And it's not a position that's easy to replace.

It's one of those positions, if you don't know anything about it, it's usually a good thing.

If you start hearing about it, you know there's a problem.

And that is something that only time can fix when you're talking about that quarterback-center relationship.

I think the first quality you got to have in any center is they got to be really smart.

Because as I mentioned before, they need to be the guy that translates and that the quarterback trusts.

He is the voice for the offensive line.

He's the guy that makes sure everybody's on the same page.

And it's something that's...

Not the hardest responsibility of an offensive lineman, but it might be the most important.

And so you got to find somebody who's very smart, especially running a complex system like the Bears do.

They're going to be changing not only protections before the snap comes, but a lot of run blocking assignments because they're running pinball.

If they're running some of the outside zone concepts, play actions.

They have to count for nine guys out there, right?