Less important than Brian Griese supplanting Rex Grossman at quarterback, in my estimation, is this news: "Chicago Bears defensive tackle Tommie Harris is expected to miss the team's game Sunday at Detroit and could miss up to a month with a sprained knee, his agent told the Chicago Tribune."

The Bears, as well as their NFC Championship Game foes, the New Orleans Saints, are in trouble.

The Chicago Tribune reports:

Regardless of what happened on the field Monday night during the Bears-Rams game at the Edward Jones Dome, the worst news of the night for the Bears came a few hours earlier when the team learned defensive tackle Tommie Harris' season officially had ended.

Harris will undergo surgery Tuesday morning in Dallas to repair a severely torn left hamstring suffered Dec. 3 at Soldier Field against the Minnesota Vikings.

This has to be one of the bigger losses the Bears could have suffered. With Mike Brown and Tommie Harris now both done for the year, the Bears' defense clearly is not what it once was.

No road map for Harris injury: Hamstrings can take weeks—or a year (John Mullin, Chicago Tribune, 12/9/2006)

Tommie Harris' hamstring injury will have an immediate effect on his Bears teammates in the short term. They aren't exactly cheered by the prospect of long-term implications either.

Harris was on his way to becoming one of the elite defensive linemen in the NFL. One concern with a hamstring injury is that it is often slow to heal.

"It takes something like up to a year before you're fully over it," said linebacker Brian Urlacher, who suffered two hamstring injuries in 2004 and missed seven games.

SI's Tim Layden writes:

Now think about this: The NFL regular season is roughly one-quarter finished. That's too soon for sweeping judgments but not too soon to identify trends and front-runners. So here's the question: Has there been a better player in the league thus far than Harris?

And if so, who?