Re: ESPN: Fixing The Bears' Offense

I remember Bill Barnwell's predraft chat and he was loving Jay Cutler last year. What you say now? Make excuses all you want for him but defending a qb who threw 25 interceptions is like defending the idea of marrying a girl whose cheated on you in the past repeatdly. Its crazy. I'd take Matt Ryan any day over that fraud.

Re: ESPN: Fixing The Bears' Offense

Matt Ryan? You have looked at Matt Ryan's numbers this year, right? Jay Cutler at least has excuses (almost always playing from behind, behind the worst offensive line in football).

Jay Cutler is a talented quarterback who has every likelihood of a successful career. He's having a bad year, which quarterbacks on bad teams playing behind bad offensive lines often do. Despite this, he has made a cast of nobody receivers (Earl Bennett? Johnny Knox?) look like NFL players. Matt Ryan can't make Roddy White and Tony Gonzalez look like NFL receivers, some weeks.

Would Cutler have been better off staying in Denver? Of course. But the article is nonsense. What they need to do to help Jay Cutler is fire everyone on the offensive side of the ball except Cutler and maybe Greg Olsen and start over. Cutler is like Brett Favre or Tom Brady, not Brees or Manning. Without good line play, he isn't a good quarterback.

Playing a lot of three TE sets with two TE's blocking might help.

Re: ESPN: Fixing The Bears' Offense

I'd love to apologize entirely for Cutler and say it's his line...but it isn't. He showed some of the signs of this year in last; he threw quite a few red-zone interceptions then too, and did try and get things going way too much in order to be a hero. Both of these are signs of poor decision making, and both are dangerous in a QB regardless of the time he has; there's no excuse to throw it into triple coverage when you're at the 4 yard line. None at all.

His mechanics are largely sound, his arm strength is good and his reads are fairly good. But he just doesn't seem to make good decisions, and more importantly he seems to let said decisions mess him up as he goes along.

Re: ESPN: Fixing The Bears' Offense

Sounds a lot like Brett Favre, then. If there's any point in getting him, they really need to blow up the offense around him, starting with that line (Knox and Bennett might grow up to be halfway decent receivers, but it's absolutely certain that the line sucks) just so that they can take advantage of what the offense actually does well.

The real irony here is that both the Bears and Broncos might have been better off without that trade; Orton wouldn't have actually won any of the games that the defense got blown off the field for, but he wouldn't have thrown away the San Fransisco game, either, and the Bears offense just isn't put together to do anything that takes advantage of Cutler's strengths (plus the Bears would have all those picks to help shore up the O-line and the defense). Meanwhile, imagine last year's Broncos offense plus healthy running backs combined with this year's vastly improved defense and you have to think they'd be better than the 9-7 this team is going to be if they manage not to choke away the Chiefs game.

Re: ESPN: Fixing The Bears' Offense

Trent Dilfer said Cutler is not even a good qb at this pont. According to him, he's a pick and stick thrower and doesn't read his progressions well. That explains so much.

Re: ESPN: Fixing The Bears' Offense

What does Trent Dilfer know about football.. the guy has spent more time in his career injured than playing.

Re: ESPN: Fixing The Bears' Offense

This is ironic given how well Cutler did against the Vikings tonight.