Where are they now? Bears edition: QB Caleb Hanie

A chat with Caleb Hanie over the phone yields the unmistakable sounds of kids running around in the background. The last Bears quarterback to throw a touchdown pass in an NFC championship game is in full-on dad mode these days.

The 35-year-old Texan and his family are back in the Chicago area. He, his wife, Andrea, and their three children – oldest daughter Tatum, 10, son Landry, 8, and daughter Jessie Jo, 3 – moved to Palos Park in the southwest suburbs from Texas about two years ago. Hanie took a job as a financial adviser for RBC Wealth Management, based in Palos Heights, advising professional athletes. It afforded him more opportunities to spend time with his kids. Since the pandemic hit, work-from-home life has only ratcheted that up another notch.

And so he once again is near the scene of his longest NFL stint – four seasons with the Bears from 2008 to 2011. He lasted a few more seasons in the NFL, backing up Peyton Manning in 2012 with Denver, and brief stints with Baltimore, Cleveland and Dallas in 2013 and 2014.

In Chicago, Bears fans always will remember the NFC championship game against the Packers on Jan. 23, 2011. First, Jay Cutler went down with a knee injury. Todd Collins entered the game and threw four incompletions before he, too, went down with an injury. In stepped Hanie, the third-string quarterback who had played in two games and attempted a grand total of seven passes during the 2010 regular season.

As one might expect, he had some good plays and some not-so-good plays. But he kept the Bears in the game, which is about all you can ask of a third-string QB playing on the biggest stage.

After his playing days were over, Hanie went into business with 2008 Bears seventh-round draft pick Joey LaRocque, who had created Rocksolid, a company that makes soft-shell football helmets for offseason training. Hanie spent his first six months cold-calling high school coaches trying to sell helmets. It was a rude awakening but an experience he said he learned a lot from. He left Rocksolid about a year and a half ago to move back to Chicago and help fellow professional athletes with their finances.

Hanie recently spoke with ShawLocal.com about life after football, today’s NFL and his NFC championship game experience. The following discussion has been edited for clarity and length.

What’s it like advising athletes financially when you were in their shoes not so long ago?

Hanie: “It’s really allowed me to connect with the players, especially young guys coming out of the NFL. I work a lot trying to get with guys who are in college coming into the draft this year, as well as working with current NFL players. I have a couple baseball guys, too. It’s easy to relate. They find it easy to trust somebody who’s been there and done that, and it helps to have gone through this same process, which I’m telling them is the best process to follow.”

What exactly do you help them with?

Hanie: “A lot of times they just don’t realize how much everything works together in their life. The decisions you make off the field affect your on-field performance – they understand that. But the decisions you make off the field affect your investment portfolio, as well. If you choose to get yourself into a house too early before you’ve had a chance to build a foundation, then those guys may put themselves at greater risk. If they’re choosing to put the wrong people around them, that can affect their emotions. It’s a passionate game; it’s an emotional sport. You spend 20 years of your life trying to make it to that level, and now you’re here and the emotions run high when you’re job’s at stake every year. What they don’t realize is that it’s nice to have somebody that they can call and bounce ideas off of and say, ‘Hey, I’m thinking of buying a house’ or ‘I’m thinking of leasing a car, what do you think?’ I’m able to keep perspective for them and say, ‘Remember our goals for 30 years from now.’”

What was your transition from football to a “normal” career like?

Hanie: “It was hard. It takes a lot longer than you think it’s going to take for you just mentally and emotionally to get over the hump. Even if you do move into another career quickly, your identity is so wrapped up in being a football player that sometimes it’s difficult to get over that because you’re not VIP anymore. You can’t get any door open that you want like you could when you were playing. When you put the title ‘former NFL player’ in front of your name, it’s a lot different than ‘current NFL player.’ It’s just hard to get over sometimes. But the world forces you to do so, and you’re left to deal with it.”

What’s dad life like for you?

Hanie: “Yeah, it’s a constant cycle of stress and joy and love and all that stuff. Everything you can imagine having kids. It’s great. They’re a blessing, for sure. But they’re a handful. I have a 10-year-old daughter, Tatum, I have an 8-year-old son (Landry), and I have a 3-year-old girl running around (Jessie Jo). We kind of run the spectrum here. Just got out of diapers, hopefully for good. It’s a balancing act just like anybody, you’ve got to get your priorities right.”

Do you find time to watch the NFL these days?

Hanie: “Yeah, I do. A lot more the last couple years since I’ve gotten back into managing players at this level. It’s nice to be able to watch up-and-coming guys who might be good guys for me to reach out to to work with or keep up with my clients. And I enjoy the sport.”

What’s changed since you were playing?

Hanie: “There’s just a lot of turnover. It seems like it’s just getting more and more short-term. And that may not be accurate, it just kind of feels that way, especially every year you’ve got all these coaches leaving, and this year you’ve got like 10 quarterbacks that are probably going to be in different places, guys that are really good players. Like Deshaun Watson and Matt Stafford. You’ve already seen it happen with [Stafford] and [Jared] Goff, Carson Wentz.

“Then you’ve got Deshaun Watson opting out like it’s basketball, just like, ‘I don’t want to play here anymore.’ You see all these basketball guys all the time, they hold all the power with like James Harden. You’ve seen that start to creep in a little bit with Stafford mutually agreeing to part ways, J.J. Watt mutually agreeing, Deshaun Watson. It’s only going to get worse as guys feel this wasn’t a great fit, which – good or bad – that’s just how it is.”

In your experience, what does it take to be a successful backup quarterback?

Hanie: “It takes a little luck, honestly – getting in a great position right out of college, especially if you’re not going to come in and start right away. If you landed with Sean Payton, he’s shown to develop quarterbacks pretty darn well. Andy Reid. Their backups tend to stick around a long time. So it takes a little bit of luck. Do you get in the right fit with the right guys? Does the coaching staff that drafted you stick around?

“I came in with Pep Hamilton and Ron Turner, and I fit that system a whole lot better than I did with Mike Martz, but I was able to survive two years under Martz, and it forged me into a little bit more well-rounded quarterback. But was it the best fit for me? Probably not. Those things play into it. But the typical things that you think of as a backup quarterback are treating it like you’re a starter in preparation. Keeping your body in top shape in the offseason. Making sure you’re around, communicating with the team. Being a leader by example, for sure. You’ve just got to stay ready.

“When you get the chance to come in and play, you want to be hitting at the peak of your quarterbacking skills. You want everything to come together from your athleticism to your accuracy to your understanding of the system, understanding of the game plan and knowing the defense on the other side of the ball. All that has to come together for that one moment and you don’t know when that moment’s going to be. It could be in the NFC championship game, like mine, or it could be preseason or early in the year the [starter] goes down and you’ve got to start four games.”

I can’t talk to you without discussing that NFC championship game appearance. What stands out about that now 10 years later?

Hanie: “When I look back on it, it’s just that initial feeling of walking on the field with the camera in my face and only having thrown like four balls to warm up, and it’s like 2 degrees outside. That whole experience of like, ‘Oh, I’m definitely in this right now.’ It’s the only game on in the world, and all eyes are on you. You’re in Soldier Field, Bears-Packers. That moment of walking on the field stands out to me like nothing else.

“And then just the emotions of the crowd when we started coming back and making some big plays. Those little moments stick out to me a lot. And then just the guys in the locker room, my family after the game, the whole experience in general really, really stands out. I’m thankful that that’s the case, instead of the bad plays that were in that game, which still are there, but I’m able to enjoy the good side of it.”

Do you have any Jay Cutler stories?

Hanie: “Unfortunately no. Nothing too exciting. We spent a lot of time together. We hung out. We were good friends. Hanging out with him when he first got to Chicago was something I’ll always remember. From the first day he got there, we kind of naturally connected in the weight room and working out. Then he got to do the whole honeymoon that summer with Chicago – going out to all the Blackhawks games, the White Sox games, Cubs games, Bulls, as a VIP. He got to throw out the first pitch at games, those types of things, but I got to be dragged along with him. So that was a fun summer to kind of ride his coattails a little bit and experience some of those cool Chicago scenes.”