BEARS NOTES

• Patrick Finley does a nice job in the Sun-Times breaking down how Fox and Pace view their defensive roster’s transition from 4-3 front to 3-4. (I think this transition is the most over-discussed topic in the universe.)
• Ron Parker and Mason Foster would be the types of signings I expected from this free agency period. Mid-range veteran talent that can play their positions at a minimal cost.
• Why exactly would Ryan Pace need to be asked about “mending fences” with Jay Cutler? Has Ryan Pace ever said a negative word about Cutler? Pace evaluated the player, evaluated the possibility of replacing the player, listened to trade offers (if you think he didn’t, you’re nuts) and determined the best course of action for the 2015 Bears was Cutler at quarterback? How could anyone make the argument Cutler deserved more than that?
• If the Saints are really shopping Kenny Stills – which makes no sense to me – how can the Bears not be interested? A wide receiving corps of Alshon Jeffery, Kenny Stills and Eddie Royal would make Brandon Marshall quite easy to forget.

AND SOME QUESTIONS…

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Jay Cutler is overpaid and underproducing.

That’s one of the main arguments against Cutler: he was the highest paid player in the NFL last year (even though his cap hit was 3rd highest among quarterbacks), and he stinks.  It’s the reason the Bears need to get rid of Cutler, and the reason nobody will trade for him.

Remember talk of the Bears having to give away a high draft pick to get somebody to take on Cutler’s contract back in December?  That was laughable, and here’s why: the truth of the matter is that Jay Cutler’s contract is right in line for who he is as an NFL quarterback, especially now that 2014 is out of the way on his front-loaded deal.

Don’t believe me?  Let’s take a closer look at how Cutler’s deal compares to the rest of the league’s quarterbacks over the next two years.

2015

Jay Cutler’s 2015 cap hit is $16.5 million, which is 11th in the NFL among quarterbacks.  This is definitely high, but consider that quarterbacks like Russell Wilson, Andrew Luck, Cam Newton, and Ryan Tannehill are still operating on rookie deals that prevent them from being paid big money.

Even with that, there are 17 quarterbacks in the NFL with a cap hit of $14 million or more in 2015, and 3 with a cap hit greater than $20 million. Eli Manning ($19.8M), Matthew Stafford ($17.7M), and Sam Bradford ($16.6M) all have higher cap hits than Cutler despite being very similar to him statistically (or worse, in Bradford’s case).  The next two quarterbacks after him are Alex Smith ($15.6M) and Colin Kaepernick ($15.3M). Carson Palmer ($14.5M) also checks in within $2 million of Cutler, as does Joe Flacco ($14.6M), who has a low cap hit that will come back to bite Baltimore in the future, as we’ll see in a minute.

2016

Cutler is currently slated to be 9th among quarterbacks with a $17 million cap hit.  But that does not include Ben Roethlisberger, Cam Newton, Eli Manning, Philip Rivers, Russell Wilson, Andrew Luck, or Ryan Tannehill, who all have contracts that expire following the 2015 season.  Several of those players will end up leapfrogging Cutler, which should end up putting him in the 12-15 range.

If you assume all seven of the players I listed will have cap hits of $15 million or greater in 2016 (a reasonable assumption, though it’s possible a few may have backloaded deals that don’t have the cap hit that high in 2016), that makes 18 quarterbacks with cap hits of $15 million or more (5 above $20 million), with 2 more coming in at more than $13 million.  Cutler’s cap hit of $17 million will be behind Joe Flacco ($28.5M-have fun with that!), Matthew Stafford ($22.5M), and Alex Smith ($17.8M), and right ahead of Colin Kaepernick ($16.8M).

Cost of doing business

In other words, Cutler is getting paid right about what he should be based on the quarterback contract landscape around the NFL.  Quarterbacks are ridiculously important, and are therefore ridiculously expensive.  If you have a Jay Cutler (or Andy Dalton, Colin Kaepernick, Matthew Stafford, Alex Smith, Carson Palmer…), you’re paying him a bare minimum of $15 million a year to stick around.  Otherwise you get to try your luck with the Josh McCowns and Brian Hoyers of the world or try and strike lightning in the draft.  Welcome to the modern NFL.

An added bonus of Cutler’s contract is that it never has a balloon year that destroys the cap like Tony Romo ($27.8M in 2015), Drew Brees (average of $26.9M next 2 years), or Joe Flacco ($28.6M in 2016).  Those types of years give the player all the leverage for a favorable re-working of the deal that guarantees more money and moves it to the future, making it extremely cost prohibitive to move on from the player if their play declines (or forces you to swallow a lot of dead money after they retire).

The Bears (or any team they trade Cutler to) can decide to move on with only $2 million in dead money after 2016, which follows two years of very reasonable cap hits (as I have outlined above).  And his cap hits don’t balloon much after that either, as it doesn’t go above $17 million until 2019, at which point Cutler will be 36 and all the dead money in his deal will be gone.  It’s impossible to predict for sure right now with so many new deals to be signed, but it seems highly likely Cutler’s cap hit will not be in the top 10 among quarterbacks in any of the next 4 seasons.

Suffice it to say that Cutler’s contract is certainly not going to have much negative impact on his trade value, should the Bears decide to trade him.  Anybody looking to get an established quarterback like Cutler is going to pay him very close to that amount anyway.

Not great value

Please don’t take this to mean that I think the Bears must stick with Jay Cutler, or that he provides great value, or that he is a great quarterback.  I think Cutler is an average starting quarterback, but the important point is that he is paid like an average starting quarterback.  Whether or not giving an average quarterback that kind of money is a good idea remains to be seen (I have my doubts), but there is really no denying that his contract is pretty much in line with the current quarterback market.

This is not to say that Cutler’s contract is a bargain.  You can certainly make a statistic argument that Cutler has not produced even to the level of the 15th best quarterback in the NFL, which is roughly what I argue he will be paid like over the next few years.  I personally tend to think Cutler is in a group of quarterbacks who fall roughly in the 14-20 range, which makes his contract about right, but you could argue he’s still a little overpaid. Even if you believe that, understand he’s still not absurdly overpaid, and that there are similar quarterbacks to Cutler with similar contracts.

Of the current quarterbacks signed past their rookie deal, the only two I would classify as bargains are Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers.  Brady’s cap hit averages only $15 million a year for the next three years, a bargain for one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL. Rodgers comes in at around $19 million a season for the next 3 years, but his consistently high level of play makes him well worth that.

Brady and Rodgers, however, are the exception, not the rule.  It’s not fair to compare Cutler’s contract to theirs while ignoring the majority of deals that set the quarterback market and show quite clearly that Cutler’s contract is not unreasonable.

What should Bears do?

Now that we have that cleared up, it is a fair question to ask if Chicago would be better off trading Cutler and trying to start over with a new quarterback in the draft.  That is an interesting debate with valid arguments to be made on both sides, but it is outside the scope of this article.

All I ask is that you please stop listening to the lazy media narrative, examine the facts, and stop incorrectly calling Jay Cutler the most overpaid player in the league.  He was overpaid in 2014, but the rest of his contract now looks surprisingly reasonable.

A while back I wrote everything I thought about Jay Cutler into a single column, hoping at that time to never find need to speak on him again. I should have known better. Last week Jon Gruden opened his word hole (to call it a mouth would be an insult to mouths) and leaked out a tidbit that restarted The Great Cutler Debate in newspaper columns and on radio airwaves.

From the Sun-Times:

“I think John Fox is going to look at the body of work,” Gruden said. “They’re going to see that he didn’t get it done really with Lovie Smith or Marc Trestman, and now I’m the next head coach. I think you need to give some other people an opportunity to play. I think some of these quarterbacks get too many chances. There are good enough players out there that deserve a chance to be the quarterback of the Chicago Bears.”

“I know he has talent,” Gruden said. “But I don’t think he warrants that salary for sure. I think Chicago needs to look at getting a different leader under center.”

In all of the articles citing this quotation, it should come as no surprise to you that few if any of the journalists thought it wise to draw the personal connection between Gruden and former Bears head coach Marc Trestman. The two men not only had very obvious overlaps in their professional careers but are also known to be close friends. Did anyone really expect Jon Gruden to answer Cutler questions with, “Trestman was a nightmare. Cutler’s performance in 2014 was no worse than the rest of the organization.”

Also, who are these “good enough players” deserving the chance to be Bears quarterback? Why don’t the Browns and Bills and Titans and Jets have them? Gruden, unsurprisingly, is wrong.

The truth is I don’t care anymore.

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As many of you know, this is not the place to come for draft analysis in February. I will write about the draft EXTENSIVELY for the two weeks prior to the draft. There is no more than that required if you’ve watched ALL of college football for four months in the fall.

• Matt Forte Tweeting about a perceived lack of commitment from the Bears organization is telling. Someone in his camp got wind of the Bears mentioning him in potential trade deals. If they didn’t we are meant to believe Forte, a seasoned vet, is lashing out emotionally on social media because of erroneous blog reports. If the Bears can trade Forte – with only a year remaining on his contract – they should do so. Of course they have to get something for him but if they have no intention of retaining his services beyond 2015, what is the point of not accepting a mid-round pick for him this coming month?
• Seems the new Bears brain trust respects the work of the old Bears brain trust. Signing of both Hurst and Louis-Jean to two-year extensions signals to me, once again, Phil Emery is no longer running the Bears for one reason: he hired Marc Trestman.
• Josh McCown is set to make his decision on landing spot over the next few days and I’m hoping he chooses Chicago. I then hope the Bears make an announcement that Cutler and McCown will battle for the starting gig in training camp. Will Cutler win that competition? Of course. But it will send the message to Cutler that he can be replaced at any point in the 2015 campaign by a player who has the confidence of the coaching staff and respect of locker room.

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FOX

• John Fox was noncommittal on the future of Jay Cutler. He was asked point-blank if Cutler was his quarterback moving forward and balked. It is February 18th. We are less than a month from free agency. How many teams with a “franchise” quarterback would not endorse him as the starter today? Yes it’s possible Fox does not have enough information on Cutler to this point but what exactly is he going to learn between now and free agency or the draft? Will Cutler have an opportunity to blow Fox away at OTAs? Will the Bears be willing to risk millions of dollars on that development?
• Fox made is quite clear that if Brandon Marshall will be on the Chicago Bears in 2015 he will not be on Inside the NFL. His money quote: “Our focus needs to be on football.” This is a drastic departure from the previous head coach.
• The Bears are switching to a 3-4 base for all you 3-4/4-3 junkies out there.
• Fox knows he is taking over a defense lacking in talent. When pressed about building blocks on that side of the ball he struggled to mention anyone other than Kyle Fuller.
• Fox started to get frustrated during his short presser with the number of ways the press asked him the EXACT SAME question about Cutler. This wasn’t on the Chicago media. This was on the whole of the NFL media attending this moronic event.
• The Bears want Josh McCown back in Chicago. McCown fits to a tee the type of quarterback Fox has utilized in his first year with a team needing rejuvenation: limited ability but  great leadership qualities. If the Bears are targeting a quarterback in this draft (or a young player at the bottom of somebody else’s roster), McCown is a far better choice to help groom that young talent than Cutler.
• Seemed to be little desire on Fox’s part to leave door open for Lance Briggs and Charles Tillman to return.

The takeaway…

On offense, Fox has to determine whether his supremely talented quarterback and receiver fit in with the locker room he’s trying to build. On defense, Fox has to find players. He doesn’t have many now.

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Jay Cutler threw 18 interceptions in only 15 games in 2014, the 2nd most he’s thrown in his 6 year Bears career.  Of course, due to his high number of pass attempts (561, most in his Chicago career), Cutler’s interception rate of 3.2% was actually the 2nd lowest he’s had in Chicago, but he still turned it over too much, especially when you factor in his 9 fumbles.

Like I did for the first half of the season, I’m going to go through all 10 of Cutler’s interceptions after the bye and see what went wrong. Last time, I had three categories for the interceptions, and I will be re-using those three while also adding a fourth:

1. Poor decision. This is when Cutler makes a poor decision to force a ball into traffic.
2. Poor throw. This is when the decision to throw is not necessarily a bad one, but the throw is inaccurate.
3. Miscommunication. This is when Cutler and the intended target are not on the same page, leading to a ball going to nowhere and a turnover.
4. Receiver error: This is when Cutler makes the right read and delivers a good throw, but it bounces off the receiver’s hands and is intercepted.

Let’s get right down to it.

Interception 1

Cutler’s 1st interception of the season’s 2nd half came early in the blowout loss to Green Bay.  The Bears were already trailing 7-0 when he tried to get a pass to Martellus Bennett on 2nd and 10.  Bennett was open, but Cutler failed to lead him enough, allowing safety Micah Hyde to jump in front of the ball and grab the interception.

Note: At one point, all of these gifs worked. But alas, they are now just pictures of the first frame of the gif. Sorry. 

Verdict: poor throw

Interception 2

Cutler’s next interception came later in the same game against Green Bay.  Down 48-7 in the fourth quarter, Cutler stepped up under pressure and tried to force a ball in to Matt Forte.  A Green Bay linebacker tipped it, and cornerback Casey Hayward grabbed the ball for an easy touchdown.  This was 3rd down, but the Bears were in field goal range, so Cutler should have just taken the sack and let Robbie Gould kick.

Verdict: poor decision

Interception 3

Cutler’s next interception came against Minnesota the following week.  The Bears had the ball near midfield with 15 seconds left in the 1st half.  Trying to make something happen, Cutler forced a pass deep to Alshon Jeffery that fell well short and was intercepted by cornerback Xavier Rhodes.  I’m almost tempted to call this a Hail Mary of sorts, due to the game situation, but it was still an awful throw by Cutler.

Verdict: poor throw

Interception 4

With the Bears up 14-10 and on the edge of field goal range midway through the 3rd quarter, Minnesota brought a blitz on 3rd and 9.  Cutler tried to make a play by getting the ball to Brandon Marshall, but safety Harrison Smith was there for the easy interception.  This was just a whole bunch of wrong.  Cutler lofted the ball into traffic off his back foot, which is both a poor throw and a poor decision, while Marshall failed to make the correct blitz read and adjust his route accordingly.

Verdict: 0.5 poor decision, 0.5 miscommunication

Interception 5

After avoiding any interceptions in a win against Tampa Bay, Cutler got back in the act against Detroit on Thanksgiving.  He was able to avoid turnovers until the Bears were down big in the 4th quarter, when he threw two.  The first came on 2nd and 3 with almost 10 minutes left, when a scoring drive would have gotten the Bears back in it.  Cutler tried to force a pass deep to Brandon Marshall, but underthrew him a bit.  The Detroit cornerback was able to tip it, and safety Glover Quin came diving in to grab the interception.  Cutler probably shouldn’t have throw that ball, as Marshall was well covered, but a better delivery might have resulted in a big play.

Verdict: 0.5 poor throw, 0.5 poor decision

Interception 6

Cutler’s 2nd interception against Detroit came on the final play of the game, when the outcome had already been decided.  He tried to get a pass in to Marquess Wilson in the end zone, but it went straight to Detroit safety James Ihedigbo.  It’s hard to fault Cutler too much for this one, given the game situation, but it was a poor decision to force a ball to a covered man (though it’s possible nobody was open).

Verdict: poor decision

Interception 7

Cutler’s lone interception against Dallas came late in the 4th quarter with the Bears down 2 scores.  With 1st and goal at the 10 yard line, Cutler tried to loft a pass in to Josh Morgan in the back of the end zone.  Unfortunately, Cutler left it well short, and cornerback Orlando Scandrick was able to snag the ball out of the air and seal the victory for the Cowboys.

Verdict: poor throw

Interception 8

Cutler’s worst game of the year came against New Orleans, when he threw three interceptions, starting on the first drive of the game.  On 3rd and 8, Cutler found an open Martellus Bennett sitting in a hole in the New Orleans zone, but the pass bounced off Bennett’s hands and was caught by Patrick Robinson.  Cutler did absolutely nothing wrong on this play, though I guess you could argue that his throw could have been a smidge better.

Verdict: receiver error

Interception 9

Cutler’s next interception came at the end of the first half.  The ball was snapped near midfield with 12 seconds left, and he tried to force a deep pass to Marquess Wilson.  Wilson made his break and ran upfield, while Cutler expected him to cut towards the sidelines, but either way this was probably getting intercepted, or at least falling incomplete, as Wilson was double covered.  I’m tempted to call this a Hail Mary, but the Bears did have a chance to make something happen shorter and kick a field goal here.

Verdict: 0.5 miscommunication, 0.5 poor decision

Interception 10

Cutler’s final interception of the season came late in the 3rd quarter against the Saints.  With the Bears trailing by 21, Cutler decided to go deep to Alshon Jeffery on 3rd and 3.  He had Jeffery kind of open, but the safety got there before the ball and grabbed an easy interception after Cutler overthrew his intended target.

Verdict: 0.5 poor decision, 0.5 poor throw

Final tally

Over the 2nd half of the season, here’s how I have the tally for Cutler’s 10 interceptions:

• Poor decision: 4
• Poor throw: 4
• Miscommunication: 1
• Receiver error: 1

You’ll note that 3 of those 10 interceptions (numbers 3, 6, and 9) came in situations where Cutler was forced to try and make a play due to severe time limitations.  If you remove those, the numbers change to 2.5 poor decision, 3 poor throw, 0.5 miscommunication, and 1 receiver error.

Combining these totals with the first half of the season (when he had 7 non-Hail Mary interceptions) gives the following final count:

• Poor decision: 7.5
• Poor throw: 4.5
• Miscommunication: 4
• Receiver error: 1

I find it interesting that interceptions in the first half of the season were mostly due to poor decisions and miscommunications, while the 2nd half of the year saw poor throws and poor decisions as the main culprits.  This suggests that the Bears’ offense at least got on the same page a bit more as the season progressed, which is encouraging, but Cutler’s deep accuracy problems did not go away, nor did his tendency to force balls into traffic.

I don’t think Cutler’s ever going to stop making poor decisions that lead to risky throws and some interceptions, but having one of those every two games or so is not the end of the world.  What new coaches Adam Gase and Dowell Logains need to focus on will be improving Cutler’s mechanics and miscommunications among the offense.  Nearly half of Cutler’s interceptions in 2014 came from those areas, and reducing them would go a long way towards improving the offense.

On the surface, Jay Cutler appeared to have one of the better years of his career in 2014.  He set career highs in completion percentage and touchdowns and had the 2nd highest totals of his career in yards and passer rating.

Yet many people have argued that Cutler was actually not good in 2014, for a variety of reasons.  For one thing, he threw 18 interceptions, the 2nd most in his career.  He also had the 2nd lowest yards per attempt average of his career.

But the main knock against Cutler is that he accumulated too many of his stats in garbage time, when the game was already over and teams went into a prevent defense that allowed him easy access to meaningless completions, yards, and touchdowns.  I want to dig into the numbers today to see if this argument holds up.

2014

Using the database at Pro Football Reference, which lets you sort by game situation, I broke up Cutler’s statistics in 2014 into six categories: up two scores (9-16 points), up one score (1-8 points), tied, down one score, down two scores, and down three or more scores (17+ points).  I would have included up three or more scores as a 7th category, but Cutler never attempted a pass while the Bears held a 17 point lead (or greater) at any point in the season.

A first glance does seem to indicate that Cutler did indeed rely on some garbage time statistics to buoy his overall numbers.  He was at his best when the Bears were down by 3 or more scores, which can typically be described as garbage time, as the game is usually out of reach at this point.  Cutler’s completion percentage, yards per attempt, touchdown percentage, and touchdown/interception ratio were all significantly higher than his season averages in these instances.  Removing this data from his numbers drops his season stat line from 66.0% completion, 6.8 yards per attempt, 28 touchdowns, 18 interceptions, and an 88.6 passer rating to 65.4% completion, 6.4 yards per attempt, 20 touchdowns, 14 interceptions, and an 85.3 passer rating.

In an attempt to visualize how this looks a little better, I’ve set up the following graph, which showcases Cutler’s passer rating, yards per attempt, interception percentage, and touchdown/interception ratio in all the various game situations.  In order to make the scales all the same, I compared their percent difference from the season average.  So a passer rating of 102.7 while down by 3 or more scores was 15.9% better than his season average of 88.6, and so on. Note that I set it up so that a lower interception percentage reads as a positive number, because this is the desirable outcome.

Here you can visually see that Cutler was at his best when the team was getting blown out, followed by when they were tied or slightly ahead.  When the Bears fell behind, his interceptions increased and touchdowns decreased, leading to a plummeting touchdown/interception ratio and lower passer rating.

All Chicago years

In order to get a better feel for what this type of data normally looks like, I compiled Cutler’s stats for all six of his seasons in Chicago in the same categories.  This has an added advantage of greatly increasing the sample size, which decreases the variation from one touchdown or interception in a smaller data set.

Here we see a similar trend, but with one important difference: Cutler’s stats when the Bears are getting blown out do not skyrocket like they did in 2014.  There seems to be a negative correlation between the team’s situation and Cutler’s performance, which can be visually seen in the graph below.

This negative trend is largely driven by interception percentage, which is at it’s three worst levels in the three categories where the Bears are losing.  This suggests that Cutler has a tendency to force passes when things aren’t going well, which compounds the problem and leads to further struggles.  Conversely, when the Bears have the lead, Cutler can play safer football, and his interception rates tend to be lower.

The numbers back up the assertion that Cutler’s performance variation is largely interception based. A regression of interception percentage against drive differential (+1 for up by 1 score, -1 for down 1 score, etc.) gives a correlation of 0.4, while the correlation for completion percentage, yards per attempt, touchdown percentage (the other three stats that go into passer rating) are all 0.1 or lower.

Within season

Of course, one other factor to consider is that Cutler’s statistics have fluctuated from season to season, and ignoring that can lead to a data bias.  For instance, Cutler’s worst season in Chicago was in 2009, when the Bears played from behind more than in some of his better seasons.  Looking at Cutler’s statistics in each situation compared to the other situations in the same year, therefore, is an important control.

The  chart below shows that data, looking at how Cutler’s stats in each game situation compare, on average, to his total production from that same season.  So across his six years in Chicago, Cutler has had a completion percentage 6.3% higher than his total completion percentage that season when his team is up by 17 or more points.

Now we can see a clearer relationship between the game situation and Cutler’s performance, as completion percentage (0.36), interception percentage (0.33), and passer rating (0.45) all have meaningful positive correlations (while yards per attempt and touchdown percentage do not seem to have any discernible pattern). This is nothing shocking; as the team struggles and falls behind, Cutler is forced to throw more, his completion percentage drops, and his turnovers increase, which lowers his passer rating.

Conclusions

The numbers back up the notion that Cutler’s statistics were inflated by garbage time production in 2014.  19% of Cutler’s passing attempts came with the Bears down by 3 or more scores, but those passes accounted for 23% of his yards and 29% of his touchdowns (and 22% of his interceptions).  History suggests that is not a typical pattern for Cutler, so 2014 will likely prove to be an aberration.

The fact that Cutler’s performance gets worse as the team struggles points to how important it is for the Bears to start well with him under center.  When the team plays with a lead, Cutler seems to relax and avoid turning the ball over as much, while he starts pressing and turns the ball over more when they fall behind.  So if Cutler is going to continue to be Chicago’s starting quarterback for the next couple years, building early leads (or at least avoiding early deficits) should be a clear goal for the Bears, as Cutler’s turnover tendencies are likely to do nothing but dig a deeper hole once the Bears fall behind.

(1) Jay Cutler throws interceptions. He has started 119 games. He has thrown 130 interceptions. If you think having Cutler throw fewer passes is going to result in fewer interceptions, you’re just not paying attention. Cutler, if he plays all 16 games in an NFL season, should be expected to throw between 14-18 interceptions.

(2) Throwing interceptions does not automatically equate to losing. Eli Manning has thrown 185 interceptions in 167 starts. He’s also won two Super Bowls. Joe Flacco has thrown 90 picks in 112 games but raises his game in the postseason. These two quarterbacks are big game hunters. They raise themselves up at the big moment. They are only allowed to play in the big moments because they have complete teams.

(3) When has Jay Cutler ever had a complete team? Honestly ask yourself that question without any bias. When has he had a better than average defense, offensive line and skill guys? Not great. Just better than average. The teams Jay Cutler has played on have required him to carry them and he’s not that guy. I wonder if Pace and Fox will recognize that and do in 2015 what the Cowboys did in 2014: take the pressure off their mistake-prone quarterback.

(4) What turning the ball over DOES mean is sustained postseason success is unlikely. Eli has had a couple brilliant postseason runs. He’s barely gotten to the postseason otherwise.

(5) People say Jay Cutler is not a winning player. Well, factually, he is. 61-58 as a starter (44-38 as Bear). He has also only had one season where he’s been more than a single game below .500. (The Bears just completed that season.) You know who isn’t a winning player? Matthew Stafford. Is he being run out of Detroit for being 7 games below .500?

(6) Over his last three seasons with Lovie Smith as head coach and the combination of Martz/Tice at offensive coordinator, Jay Cutler was 27-13 as a starter. Interesting that when the team played solid defense he was not drawing “not a winning player” label.

(7) Jay Cutler is never going to be a rah rah leadership type. Remember when he used to shout at offensive coordinators (like Tom Brady) and shove offensive linemen (like Phil Rivers) and get angry when receivers ran the wrong routes (like Peyton Manning) and get lambasted by the national media for it? Well, he stopped. Now you get Jay Cutler, the father. Watch a Ravens or Giants game and find me the moments Eli and Flacco display these emotions Bears fans want from Cutler. You can watch every snap of their careers. You won’t find any.  Their emotions never change. This is not to say a quarterback shouldn’t be be a rah rah type. This is to say you don’t necessarily need this attribute to win.

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I thought John Fox called Jay Cutler “Jake” during his introductory press conference. I paused the TV, rewound and watched it again. Yep. Jake. Jake Cutler. Maybe Fox was channeling his Carolina Panthers days and remembering with nostalgic glee the days of Delhomme. Maybe he’s a fanboy for the work of actor Joe Penny. In any case, the symbolism of the moment could not be missed. With his non-committals on the future of Cutler in front of the Chicago media, the new Bears head coach made it clear that the much-maligned quarterback is no longer the franchise priority.

Does that mean Cutler will not be the quarterback in 2015? No. Does it mean Cutler will not be the quarterback in 2016? No. But it does mean that unlike the hiring two years earlier the Bears hierarchy is no longer making decisions with Cutler in mind.

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Editorial Note: There will be some advertising emerging on the site in the coming weeks. DBB is entering into an exclusive advertising agreement with a not-profit organization I’ve worked with a great deal over the last two years. The goal was to make them a partner on the site and create a role for them that does not, in any way, take away from the reader experience. I think we’ve done that. You’ll start seeing their presence after the Super Bowl.