Bob Sirott’s One More Thing about microphones at football games - KMSP-TV

One more thing, about something new to watch for during Sunday's Bears game—or, to be more exact, something new to listen for.

Have you noticed how loud and clear the sound of quarterbacks calling signals has been on TV lately? There's a reason for that.

NFL umpires used to wear microphones that picked up the sounds before the snap, but when the league repositioned the officials further away from the ball for safety reasons, they put the microphones on all starting offensive guards or centers. So now you hear the pre-snap chatter better than ever.

Those sounds may add to the experience of watching games on TV, but they've created a problem for the teams. A future opponent reviewing game tapes could steal the signals, figuring out the code for certain plays. So quarterbacks have started throwing in non-sensical jibberish -sometimes even inside jokes into the count.

Quarterbacks today have to be better at disguising what they're doing, they've got to do a little acting, and be more careful what they say. Jay Cutler may want to consider taking the microphones off his linemen in the locker room.