First Bears writer David Haugh gives Wade Wilson a sympathetic hearing on his use of the controversial online Signature Pharmacy:

By the middle of last season, Wilson had started to experience problems managing a diabetic condition he had dealt with for 24 years”a period of time that covered most of his 19-year NFL playing career as a quarterback with five teams.

His blood pressure had started to rise, for reasons not related to coaching the ups and downs of Rex Grossman. He felt moody and lethargic. His vision had become so blurry that he says he underwent two laser surgeries to correct hemorrhaging in his eyes.

Nobody needs to surf on a computer long to find a medical Web site to support Wilson’s notion that drugs such as human growth hormone are marketed to “counter diabetes by normalizing sugar metabolism gradually.”

But instead of going down the hallway to seek a professional opinion from a Bears team doctor or trainer, or even go see his personal physician, Wilson decided to experiment with a drug he discovered on the Internet. It promised to combat some of the symptoms that were making his life harder. He didn’t tell a soul except for his fiance.

“I’m a very private person,” Wilson said. “I don’t want anybody associated with the Bears or the Cowboys or the league to know what’s going on in my private life. Right or wrong, that’s why I did it the way I did it.”

Then he sticks to football business for the zinger:

Speculation that other players might have been involved doesn’t add up given the way Wilson fit into the Bears’ culture during his three- season tenure in Chicago.

As his solitary venture into cyberspace indicated, Wilson could be a bit of a loner on Smith’s staff and had lost a measure of confidence by the end of last season. One source questioned his commitment to correcting Grossman’s inconsistency.

He and Grossman never really meshed either, proof of a chilly relationship coming last month when the quarterback complained in an interview about the way Wilson neglected the fundamentals his successor, Pep Hamilton, was stressing.

If the guy was running a pharmacy for players out of his assistant coach’s office, his rapport throughout the roster probably would have been more obvious. It wasn’t.