The Fifth Down

[Lonestar]

Cutler as a Bronco: It Boiled Down to Bad Decisions

By KC Joyner
The Football Scientist, KC Joyner, is a Fifth Down contributor. Lab results from “Scientific Football 2009,” to be published in August, are available for those who order the book now.


While it wasn’t a surprise to see the volume of responses to the “Sorry, Bears Fans, Cutler Isn’t the Answer” blog post on Monday, what was surprising was how many Denver fans chimed in. A sampling:

“I completely agree with your assessment of Jay Cutler. As a diehard Broncos fan, I had quite the love affair with Jay. However, a couple of years watching him play made me see he wasn’t the answer to winning a Super Bowl. His inconsistent play, highlighted by his poor attitude, was a recipe for disaster in Denver…Bears fans will have a hard time swallowing Jay’s decisions, as well as his bad attitude.”
Daniel Sanchez

“After Cutler throws his third end-zone INT in a must win game, then sulks by himself on the bench, and after the game blames his receivers for not catching the bullets thrown three yards over their heads…

…then Bears fans will understand what it’s like to have been a Broncos fan the past 3 years.” Jvill

“To all Bears fans in love with Cutler: I’m a Broncos fan who, while was originally happy with Cutler, came to understand a lot about him as a player and a person…To top it off is Cutler’s glaring lack of maturity. Not only did he act like a spoiled brat in Denver but he lied to us as fans by saying he wanted to be a Bronco and then requesting a trade and then all but demanding it by ignoring the repeated phone calls from one of the most respected owners in all of sports.” CMA

These lead me to the one point I didn’t make in the Monday post, which is why Josh McDaniels wanted to make the change in the first place.

Cutler had a solid reputation in Denver both with his head coach (who benched Jake Plummer to put him in even after Plummer took the Broncos to within a game of the Super Bowl) and with the public prior to McDaniels’s arrival. Cutler’s battle with diabetes was quite inspirational for diabetics of all ages, and his go-for-broke style reminded some of Brett Favre.

That didn’t seem to faze McDaniels. He seemed to want to go in a different direction pretty much from Day 1. Some are speculating that this is because Cutler is a prima donna, but dealing with those kinds of players has always been part of being a coach. I cannot imagine McDaniels would have thrown in the towel on his QB right off the bat simply because of a self-important attitude. What might lead him to make a change would be watching the tape and seeing someone who makes a bad decision on one out of every twenty passes.

Some of the readers wanted to suggest that Cutler’s bad-decision rate was so high because of the bad state of the Broncos’ defense. That thought was echoed by Colin Cowherd (one of my favorite on-air personalities) when he was asked about my Cutler-Grossman comparison on the ESPN2 show SportsNation TV (weekdays at 4 p.m.). Quoting Cowherd:

“In Denver, Jay Cutler played with one of the league’s worst defenses. What does that mean? Translation - Jay Cutler was playing from behind. Huge disadvantage.”

I agree that the Denver D was terrible last year (Football Outsiders has it as one of the worst defenses of all time), but I can’t get out of my head that Cutler’s bad-decision pace was just as high in his first two seasons. He hasn’t had a year with a bad-decision percentage lower than 4%, and most of the time he is near or over the 5% rate. This weakness was amplified with the horrid Broncos defense, but it isn’t the only reason Cutler makes mistakes.

Lastly, many Chicago followers agreed with the blog commenter Andrew, who said, “I don’t know where the ridiculous idea that Bears fans gave up on or turned against Kyle Orton came from…Most of us are sad to see Orton go.” Most of the comments I’ve seen around the blogosphere sure made it seem like a collective “Kyle who?” when Cutler was traded, and I took that as meaning they weren’t Orton supporters, but it’s entirely possible Andrew’s take is closer to the pulse of the Chicago fandom.

http://fifthdown.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/cutler-as-a-bronco-it-boiled-down-to-bad-decisions/

[Lonestar]

By Toni Monkovic
Scroll below and behold the list of quarterbacks on each N.F.L. team. It’s not organized as a depth chart but in alphabetical order, and the starter is designated (in bold) only when the team has announced a clear No. 1.

Share your thoughts in the comment section. The Broncos and the Bears are two of the teams that jump off the page. The Bears have to hope Jay Cutler will have his health. If they don’t acquire a veteran quarterback, his backups will be Brett Basanez and Caleb Hanie. Cutler’s old team is left with a battle between Kyle Orton and Chris Simms — and with a general sense of unease after Josh McDaniels’s first few months as coach.

ARIZONA
Matt Leinart
Tyler Palko
Brian St. Pierre
Kurt Warner

ATLANTA
Chris Redman
Matt Ryan
D.J. Shockley
John Parker Wilson

BALTIMORE
John Beck
Joe Flacco
Troy Smith
Drew Willy

BUFFALO
Matt Baker
Trent Edwards
Ryan Fitzpatrick
Gibran Hamdan

CAROLINA
Hunter Cantwell
Jake Delhomme
Josh McCown
Matt Moore

CHICAGO
Brett Basanez
Jay Cutler
Caleb Hanie


CINCINNATI
Billy Farris
J.T. O’Sullivan
Carson Palmer
Jordan Palmer

CLEVELAND
Derek Anderson
Richard Bartell
Brady Quinn
Brett Ratliff

DALLAS
Rudy Carpenter
Jon Kitna
Stephen McGee
Tony Romo

DENVER
Tom Brandstater
Kyle Orton
Chris Simms

DETROIT
Daunte Culpepper
Matthew Stafford
Drew Stanton

GREEN BAY
Brian Brohm
Matt Flynn
Aaron Rodgers

HOUSTON
Alex Brink
Dan Orlovsky
Matt Schaub

INDIANAPOLIS
Chris Crane
Peyton Manning
Curtis Painter
Jim Sorgi

JACKSONVILLE
David Garrard
Cleo Lemon
Paul Smith

KANSAS CITY
Matt Cassel
Brodie Croyle
Ingle Martin
Tyler Thigpen

MIAMI
Chad Henne
Chad Pennington
Pat White

MINNESOTA
John David Booty
Sean Glennon
Tarvaris Jackson
Sage Rosenfels
(saving spot for gunslinger)

NEW ENGLAND
Tom Brady
Matt Gutierrez
Brian Hoyer
Kevin O’Connell

NEW ORLEANS
Drew Brees
Mark Brunell
Patrick Cowan
Joey Harrington

GIANTS
Rhett Bomar
David Carr
Eli Manning
Andre’ Woodson

JETS
Erik Ainge
Kellen Clemens
Chris Pizzotti
Mark Sanchez

OAKLAND
Jeff Garcia
Bruce Gradkowski
JaMarcus Russell
Danny Southwick
Andrew Walter

PHILADELPHIA
A.J. Feeley
Kevin Kolb
Donovan McNabb

PITTSBURGH
Charlie Batch
Dennis Dixon
Kevin McCabe
Mike Reilly
Ben Roethlisberger

ST. LOUIS
Brock Berlin
Kyle Boller
Marc Bulger
Keith Null

SAN DIEGO
Philip Rivers
Billy Volek
Charlie Whitehurst

SAN FRANCISCO
Nate Davis
Kirby Freeman
Shaun Hill
Damon Huard
Alex Smith

SEATTLE
Matt Hasselbeck
Jeff Rowe
Mike Teel
Seneca Wallace

TAMPA BAY
Josh Freeman
Brian Griese
Josh Johnson
Byron Leftwich
Luke McCown

TENNESSEE
Kerry Collins
Alex Mortensen
Patrick Ramsey
Vince Young

WASHINGTON
Colt Brennan
Jason Campbell
Todd Collins
Chase Daniel


http://fifthdown.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/13/quarterback-chart-the-fallout-in-denver-and-chicago/

[Lonestar]

By Toni Monkovic
It has been a time of ferment in Denver.
(And whenever any kind of fermentation is going on, the boys at Cold Hard Football Facts are usually in the vicinity.)

But before I get too thirsty, let’s get to the sobering statistics. Kerry Byrne of CHHF sent along a heads up on the efficiency of the Broncos’ offense in 2008.

He listed some of Denver’s statistics …

* 395.8 yards per game
* 279.4 passing yards per game
* 116.4 rushing yards per game
* An inspiring 6.21 yards per offensive play over the course of an entire season.

…. and compared them with stats from a mystery Team A.
* 411.2 yards per game
* 295.7 passing yards per game
* 115.6 rushing yards per game
* An inspiring 6.22 yards per offensive play over the course of an entire season.

To identify Team A, click on “Read more.”



Byrne wrote:

Team A is the 16-0 Patriots of 2007 – who scored an NFL-record 589 points (36.8 PPG), the second-highest per-game average in the entire history of the league (1950 Rams, 38.8 PPG).

That’s right: the 2008 Broncos moved the ball up and down the field nearly as well as the offense many consider the greatest in the history of the game.

But when it came to the two results that actually mattered – turning those yards into points and victories – the two teams could not have been more different. The 2007 Patriots boasted twice as many victories and outscored the 2008 Broncos by better than two touchdowns per game.

Byrne goes on to say:

Yards, and passing yards in particular, have virtually no correlation to success in the NFL.

In two seasons with Cutler the clear-cut No. 1 quarterback, Denver’s offensive efficiency crashed faster and more sharply than the Icelandic stock market.

Read the whole argument. Kerry is usually a masterly distiller of football facts.
http://fifthdown.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/05/just-the-facts-the-cold-ones-on-cutler/

[Lonestar]

By Stefan Fatsis
Stefan Fatsis is the author of A Few Seconds of Panic, about his summer as a placekicker for the Denver Broncos and life in the modern NFL. He is a sports commentator for National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” and a contributor to the New York Times and other publications.

The saga of the Denver Broncos and Jay Cutler is like the children’s song about the old lady who swallowed a fly. You can find a reason for every decision, but you still might not ever know why.

In this case, the first swallow was Broncos owner Pat Bowlen firing Coach Mike Shanahan. The decision to break up after 14 seasons wasn’t driven by a perception of a diminution in the coach’s football skills. Bowlen told me he still respected those. But it wasn’t a spontaneous act based on the team’s late-season collapse in 2008, either. Instead, the owner and others in the organization began to feel that Shanahan’s my-way operating style had lost some of its effectiveness, in the front office and with the players.

Bowlen over the years had gradually ceded to Shanahan virtually all operating control of the team. After three mediocre seasons in a row — a 24-24 record; no playoff appearances — he decided this was as good a time as any to rebrand and possibly revive his business.

One other overlooked factor: Bowlen is 65. He’d like the franchise to be in a stable place for an ownership transition in the next few years to one of his seven children. I got to know Bowlen well during the summer I spent as a kicker with the Broncos to write a book about the NFL. He doesn’t want to be like Buffalo Bills owner Ralph Wilson, presiding over his team, even as a figurehead, at age 90. I also know Bowlen to be thoughtful, reasonable and sensible — and tough when he needs to be. He trusts the people he has hired — leaving the football decisions to the football people and business decisions to the business people — and weighs in when necessary. That was less and less under Shanahan. He wanted a more active role in his final years as owner.

In Josh McDaniels, Bowlen chose to succeed Shanahan a coach schooled in New England’s disciplined methodology. McDaniels analyzed every player on the Broncos, examining footage and reading reports prepared by his staff. He made some small, head-scratching decisions, like dumping reliable and hard-working (not to mention mature and intelligent) Shanahan holdovers like Mike Leach, the long snapper, and Nate Jackson, a tight end and special teamer. (Disclosure: Both are friends of mine.) He dumped assistant coaches. He rearranged the furniture, literally, at the Broncos’ suburban headquarters. As I type this, just eight players, three assistant coaches and three football executives remain from the time I spent with the team in 2006.

Jay Cutler wasn’t spared scrutiny, nor should he have been. Which leads to a question that few people seem to be asking: Why would McDaniels have considered trading Cutler in the first place? I don’t know the coach, but I know how NFL front offices operate. It’s incumbent on team executives to pick up the phone when other teams call. It’s incumbent on them to listen. It’s not incumbent on them to do more than say, thanks, but no thanks. In this instance, McDaniels was contacted about acquiring his former quarterback in New England, Matt Cassel. Proposals were made. How far they got, and how aggressive the Broncos were about encouraging them, only the participants know for sure.

Should Jay Cutler and his agent, Bus Cook, have been insulted that these conversations took place? Of course not. Coaches and general managers have a responsibility, akin to a CEO’s fiduciary responsibility, to consider anything that might improve their team. What I know based on talking to some of my former Broncos colleagues is that, well before this drama erupted, Cook and Cutler wanted to renegotiate the quarterback’s six-year contract, which has three years left. The current deal included $15 million in guaranteed payments. Cutler was paid a $1.275 million roster bonus in 2006 and a $7.9 million option bonus in 2007. But his base salaries are, by Pro Bowl-quarterback standards, meager, and a $12 million performance bonus isn’t due until 2011.

Ted Sundquist, the Broncos’ general manager when I was with the team, told me at the time that, because of the large lump-sum, back-end payout, the contract would probably be restructured before it expires. He said Bus Cook also expected that to happen. Did Cutler and Cook manufacture their hurt feelings over McDaniels’s trade talks and the coach’s subsequent ineffectual spin in an effort to get a new contract now, or get to another city that would give them one? I don’t know. But they certainly saw an opening.

Still, issues over money and bruised egos are addressed and massaged every day in pro sports. The Broncos didn’t have to publicly announce that they wanted to trade Cutler. He was an employee under contract. He would have found a way to sublimate his wounded feelings and show up for mandatory training or risk watching Chris Simms take snaps in September. But at some point, possibly just this week, possibly as long ago as January, the Broncos concluded that they would be better off in the long run — on the field and as a business — with a quarterback other than Cutler.

So why did they swallow that fly? I met Cutler when he was the first-round draft choice in 2006 who was expected to ride the bench for a couple of years behind Jake Plummer and then lead Denver for a decade or more. The new Elway! Finally! But Cutler is virtually absent from my book. That’s because he was uncompelling journalistically and off-putting personally. I sought out players who thought deeply and were interested in explaining the physical and emotional realities of playing in the NFL. That wasn’t Cutler. His demeanor often was that of a bored, eye-rolling teenage girl, with a dash of smugness for good measure. Since then, I’ve received unflattering reports about his behavior and indifferent-to-negative ones about his relationship with his teammates.

Should those sorts of perceptions outweigh a laser arm on a 25-year-old body and 4,500 passing yards and 13-1 record in games in which his team gave up no more than 21 points and any of the other stats rolled out by his supporters? Certainly not. But football teams, like other businesses, consist of human beings whose ability to interact is integral to their success. And no human being is more important to the success of a football team than the quarterback. Josh McDaniels may be young and inexperienced, but he’s not dumb. He didn’t want to sabotage his new team, or his own future. So something else must have been going on.

Here’s a radical thought: Maybe McJayGate, as the Denver press dubbed it, wasn’t about who dissed whom or who ignored whose text messages or whether a new coach has to earn the respect of his players. Maybe it was about something more prosaic but also more substantial: the future of the team. Maybe Pat Bowlen, Josh McDaniels and other team officials examined Cutler’s statistics, his physical traits, his emotional temperament, his suitability to the coach’s offensive system, his leadership ability, his off-field behavior and his overall attitude — including the evolution of his relationship with his new boss. And then they decided that the Denver Broncos had a greater chance of winning with someone else in the huddle. Even someone named Kyle Orton.
http://fifthdown.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/03/stefan-fatsis-on-jay-cutler/

[Lonestar]

By Toni Monkovic
Jay Cutler is like a magnet in that he can attract and repel — just depends which side you’re coming from. Here’s a sampling of Web opinion (and a clip from “PTI” at bottom):

Mark Kiszla of The Denver Post:

For all his obvious physical gifts, self-reliance and refusal to surrender, Cutler is cursed by a thin skin and a thick head.

Let’s go to the videotape for proof.

During a 33-19 loss to Kansas City in September, Cutler came unglued in the third quarter, all because a journeyman receiver named Cliff Russell made a mistake on a pass route, resulting in an incompletion.

During a timeout the anger was written in red on Cutler’s face. He was spitting mad.

When the Broncos returned to the field, Cutler threw two interceptions in the team’s next four offensive snaps, committing the turnovers within a span of 60 seconds that saw Denver unravel in a revealing defeat to a truly awful AFC West opponent.


Mike Mulligan, Chicago Sun-Times:

Cutler’s trade demand, along with a less-than-cordial relationship with Denver media, has left him looking like a petulant, spoiled child, but sources close to the team say that perception is inaccurate. While he’s not a beloved figure in the locker room in the John Elway mode, Cutler does have close friends on the team, and those friends are high-character players.

TampaBay.com:

Quarterback Jay Cutler has been characterized as immature, a whiner or malcontent because of the manner in which he has reacted to the Broncos attempt to explore trading him.

But Bucs linebacker Niko Koutouvides, who played with Cutler in Denver last season, says that’s not the teammate he remembers.

“How I know him as a teammate, he’s a leader, wanting to win, fiesty, a fighter, likes to take a hit and get back up ready to go.”

The most comprehensive account (I could find) on Cutler was done recently by John Henderson of The Denver Post: “Who is Jay Cutler? And why isn’t he loved more?”

One of the insights in Henderson’s article is Cutler’s sense of loyalty, as described by his high school coach in Indiana, Bob Clayton:

“Jay’s fiercely loyal to whatever organization he’s with, whether it was Heritage Hills, or Vanderbilt, or the Denver Broncos,” Clayton said. “The thing about these athletes, a lot of them come from a high school and college system where loyalty is reciprocated. You don’t get that in the NFL.”

He added that Cutler’s anger, directed at his new coach, Josh McDaniels, upon learning about the potential trade did not surprise him.

“You have to know Jay,” Clayton said. “Jay is not a blabbermouth, not a chatty guy, but if you ask him a point-blank question, if he feels strongly about it, he’s going to give you an answer. He gave an honest answer and it becomes a nationwide media issue.”
http://fifthdown.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/02/the-real-jay-cutler/

[Lonestar]

By Toni Monkovic
A man fires his best friend. We didn’t have room for the full Associated Press story in the paper. Here are excerpts:

They were best friends as much as employee and boss. Nothing told that story better than the tears in the eyes of Pat Bowlen and Mike Shanahan as they talked about their sad farewell.

“This is as tough as it gets,” Bowlen said Wednesday, his eyes moist, as he explained his day-old decision to fire the coach who finally brought the Super Bowl trophy to Denver.

“These are tough decisions, but that’s what leaders do,” Shanahan said, also trying to choke back tears.

Bowlen and Shanahan were family, and maybe that’s why Shanahan was as shocked as anyone when he got the call to head to Bowlen’s office for a meeting Tuesday.

“Lunch,” Shanahan said when asked what he thought the meeting was about. He was only half-joking.

The meeting lasted only about five minutes, not because of any bad blood, but because “I think we were both broken down,” Shanahan said.

Bowlen, in Shanahan’s opinion, is the best owner in sports and the Broncos its best organization. By reflex, the coach often used the word “we” when discussing the team he is no longer part of.

“Pat Bowlen and I will be best friends forever,” Shanahan said. “He stood by me when I had to make tough decisions. I know this was tougher on him than it was on me.”

Indeed, Bowlen spoke softly and looked as shocked as anyone in the city as he stood at the microphone, discussing a decision hardly anyone ever thought he would make.

On many occasions since those Super Bowl wins, Bowlen called Shanahan his coach for life.

“Yes, I’ve said that,” Bowlen said, “I don’t have any regrets about saying it.

“I guess nothing’s forever.”

Extra point: The firing of Shanahan opens the door for the return of John Elway in a front office job.
http://fifthdown.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/01/tear-filled-firing-bowlen-and-shanahan/

[Lonestar]

By Judy Battista
The Raiders
Al Davis’s longing to find the next Cliff Branch led him to take receiver Darrius Heyward-Bey, who was the fastest man in the draft. But did the memo about Michael Crabtree stop at San Francisco and not make it across the bay? Crabtree, who was much higher rated, was available when the Raiders picked. So was Jeremy Maclin. Offensive tackle Eugene Monroe would have filled another glaring need. Maybe Heyward-Bey is the perfect fit for a JaMarcus Russell-armed offense, but what about the second-round pick, safety Michael Mitchell? He was rated by almost everybody else as a second-day pick and by some as a free-agent prospect. He, too, is fast, but this was a reach of epic proportions, and the Raiders seem to be speeding toward irrelevance again.

The Bengals
The Bengals are again becoming a halfway house for wayward players. First, they acquired Tank Johnson — and hopefully not his gun collection — in the off-season. Then they drafted offensive tackle Andre Smith, a supremely talented player who raised red flags when he went AWOL from the combine and then fired his agent. In the third round, they took the pass rusher Michael Johnson, a physical marvel with a reputation for giving up on plays. Even his new defensive coordinator said his consistency was a big issue. Shouldn’t Marvin Lewis get combat pay for always having to deal with character issues?

The Broncos
Surely, there is a plan here somewhere. But after sending Jay Cutler packing, the Broncos didn’t go after Mark Sanchez, or a defensive star. Instead they drafted running back Knowshon Moreno after loading up on veteran running backs in free agency. Not too much confidence in Kyle Orton to build the offense around, huh?

http://fifthdown.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/2009-draft-recap-most-questionable-moves/

[Lonestar]

By Toni Monkovic
Is Jay Cutler just misunderstood? If so, he’s being misunderstood by a lot of people. Jets safety Kerry Rhodes isn’t on his Christmas card list. Philip Rivers isn’t one of his Facebook friends. The Broncos have had enough and announced yesterday that they would try to trade him. And one of our top commenting regulars, Walt Bennett, a Jets fan, doesn’t want him anywhere near New York. He makes the case here. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section.

By Walt Bennett Jr.

Since Brett Favre retired (again) in February, the buzz in the media and in the blogosphere has been that the Jets cannot enter the 2009 season with a battle of unknowns at quarterback. There has been rampant speculation that the Jets may make a play for Jay Cutler, offering up a young QB and a draft pick, perhaps.

Allow me to say: Don’t do it.

By wrestling his organization to the ground, Cutler has shown that he will deploy the nuclear option (”I won’t play, and you can’t make me”) when he is unhappy. He has shown that, with a guaranteed $16 million left to come in the next two years, and the starting QB job still his, he can still find a way to place a petty quarrel with a coach above the team.

Cutler is behaving as if he ought to be held in the same reverence as John Elway, who won two Super Bowls in his storied career, while Cutler has won exactly nothing, and who presided over a collapse eerily similar to that of the Jets in 2008.

Of course there is an upside: Cutler has a strong arm, good mobility, and might eventually develop into a consistent winner.

But if the Jets trade for Cutler, all of the media attention will immediately latch onto the new quarterback, which will immediately tilt the balance of power in the locker room and between player and organization.

His inflated ego, combined with his selfishness, combined with his seeming emotional instability, combined with the simple fact that he hasn’t won yet, add up to a headache that Rex Ryan does not need.

In other words, not my definition of “leader.”

Some may place less importance on this than I do, but the quarterback needs to be the most respected player on the team. There can be others, of course, but the quarterback must be above controversy and above finger pointing, either from him or toward him. That man is not Cutler, and it is not likely to be Cutler.

I make the occasional point that New York is a different place to play than another city. I’ve seen it written that Cutler has had to live in the shadow of Elway. No, that was Jake Plummer’s miserable fate. Cutler arrived as the antidote to Plummer’s perceived reckless play, and was given a lot of room to find his way by Denver fans. He has poisoned that relationship now, for sure. He would be offered no immunity in New York.

The Jets have three quarterbacks on the roster for a reason. As recently as 2007, they considered Kellen Clemens talented enough to start, and for all of 2008 we kept hearing what a future star Brett Ratliff is destined to be.

So, let’s find out. And while we do, we keep the cost of the position reasonable until we know what we have, and we build team unity, and Ryan has the opportunity to mold his new team in his image.

Which is, after all, what we got him for.

The downside of bringing Cutler in at this time far outweighs the upside, and it assumes facts not in evidence: that the Jets cannot find a reliable starter from the corps they currently have.

A new coach has free rein to jettison deadwood, to accomplish addition by subtraction. Obtaining Cutler runs an unnecessary and, in my view, unacceptable risk of achieving subtraction by addition.
http://fifthdown.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/the-case-against-cutler-as-a-jet/

[Lonestar]

By Toni Monkovic
Jay Glazer of FoxSports.com is reporting that Jay Cutler has been traded to Chicago.

The terms of the deal, according to Glazer:

Denver will receive Chicago’s first- and third-round pick in this year’s draft, and Chicago’s first-round pick in 2010, along with Kyle Orton. The Bears will get Cutler and the Broncos’ fifth-round pick this year. Chicago’s first pick this year is No. 18.
(I wonder if the Bears wish they could have retroactively thrown in Rex Grossman.)

Extra point: Seems to be a steep price. Was it a good deal for the Bears? And was it a good deal for the Jets to sit this out?

Update | 6:29 p.m. The Redskins tried but failed to get Cutler. As a reader pointed out, it’s worth noting the difference in reactions by Cutler and Jason Campbell upon learning that their teams were considering trading them.

From the Washington Post’s Redskins Insider blog:

Redskins quarterback Jason Campbell said he plans to move forward and “to do everything I can do to help us get to where we want to be as a team” after the team failed to acquire quarterback Jay Cutler from the Denver Broncos and trade Campbell.

Campbell acknowledged that he was disappointed in having his name involved in the trade speculation, “but you can’t let that get to you. You really just have to understand what it is. That’s the business side of it and you have to go do your job still.”

http://fifthdown.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/02/cutler-traded-to-bears-is-price-too-steep/

[Lonestar]

By Toni Monkovic
Broncos quarterback Jay Cutler and Coach Josh McDaniels were supposed to put out a brush fire Saturday that was threatening to consume the team. Instead, they fanned it into a raging inferno. Cutler has officially requested a trade, and he won’t show up Monday for McDaniels’s first team meeting of the off-season program.

ESPN quoted Cutler as saying:


“I went in there with every intention of solving the issue, being a Bronco, moving forward as a Bronco. We weren’t in there but about 20 minutes, [McDaniels] did most of the talking and as far as I’m concerned, he made it clear he wants his own guy. He admitted he wanted Matt Cassel because he said he has raised him up from the ground as a quarterback. He said he wasn’t sorry about it. He made it clear that he could still entertain trading me because, as he put it, he’ll do whatever he feels is in the best interest of the organization.

“At the end of the meeting, he wasn’t like, ‘Jay, I want you as our quarterback, you’re our guy.’ It felt like the opposite.”

Mike Klis of The Denver Post looked at the roots of the dispute:

Somewhere, no doubt behind a closed door, New England coach Bill Belichick may be snickering.

The Jets are without a proven quarterback. They have quickly built up a Super Bowl-contending defense, and it would be a shame if it was undermined by poor quarterback play. But are the Jets willing to shake up the team for the second off-season in a row with a major quarterback acquisition?

Which leads us to …. What do Cutler and Brett Favre have in common? A lot, apparently.
By Lindsay H. Jones of The Denver Post:

Jay Cutler has long been compared to Brett Favre, for their similar arm strength and gunslinger attitudes.

Now they also will be similarly linked as being at the center of major offseason drama.

Extra point: I don’t think the Favre reference was gratuitous. Now linking to this story, that might be gratuitous.

Cutler has outperformed the two quarterbacks chosen ahead of him in the 2006 draft, Vince Young and Matt Leinart.

http://fifthdown.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/16/cutler-asks-for-a-trade-jets-need-a-qb/

[NameUsedBefore]

Well, you'd have to downplay, per the article, one of the "worst of all time" defenses, worst starting field position, one of the worst special teams, a rotation of running-backs and the simple matter of fact that Cutler is still a young QB (when players like Manning took 5-years, for example) to say Denver is better off without Cutler and he, as a player, simply wasn't going anywhere anyway.

I mean, really now. Denver was not a good team last year and you can hardly downplay what a non-existent defense can do to an offense; or what a rotation of RB's can do to an offense; or what the worst starting field position in the league can do and so on and so forth. Cutler and the offense played lights out against San Diego and still were in losing position to have that fumble-play go down. That says something about what kind of support Cutler and the offense had. It can't be dismissed, IMO.

[Dirk]

****dead horse anyone****

As they say....um..buh bye

[Lonestar]

By KC Joyner
The Football Scientist, KC Joyner, is a Fifth Down contributor. Lab results from “Scientific Football 2009,” to be published in August, are available for those who order the book now.


While it wasn’t a surprise to see the volume of responses to the “Sorry, Bears Fans, Cutler Isn’t the Answer” blog post on Monday, what was surprising was how many Denver fans chimed in. A sampling:

“I completely agree with your assessment of Jay Cutler. As a diehard Broncos fan, I had quite the love affair with Jay. However, a couple of years watching him play made me see he wasn’t the answer to winning a Super Bowl. His inconsistent play, highlighted by his poor attitude, was a recipe for disaster in Denver…Bears fans will have a hard time swallowing Jay’s decisions, as well as his bad attitude.”
Daniel Sanchez

“After Cutler throws his third end-zone INT in a must win game, then sulks by himself on the bench, and after the game blames his receivers for not catching the bullets thrown three yards over their heads…

…then Bears fans will understand what it’s like to have been a Broncos fan the past 3 years.” Jvill

“To all Bears fans in love with Cutler: I’m a Broncos fan who, while was originally happy with Cutler, came to understand a lot about him as a player and a person…To top it off is Cutler’s glaring lack of maturity. Not only did he act like a spoiled brat in Denver but he lied to us as fans by saying he wanted to be a Bronco and then requesting a trade and then all but demanding it by ignoring the repeated phone calls from one of the most respected owners in all of sports.” CMA

These lead me to the one point I didn’t make in the Monday post, which is why Josh McDaniels wanted to make the change in the first place.

Cutler had a solid reputation in Denver both with his head coach (who benched Jake Plummer to put him in even after Plummer took the Broncos to within a game of the Super Bowl) and with the public prior to McDaniels’s arrival. Cutler’s battle with diabetes was quite inspirational for diabetics of all ages, and his go-for-broke style reminded some of Brett Favre.

That didn’t seem to faze McDaniels. He seemed to want to go in a different direction pretty much from Day 1. Some are speculating that this is because Cutler is a prima donna, but dealing with those kinds of players has always been part of being a coach. I cannot imagine McDaniels would have thrown in the towel on his QB right off the bat simply because of a self-important attitude. What might lead him to make a change would be watching the tape and seeing someone who makes a bad decision on one out of every twenty passes.

Some of the readers wanted to suggest that Cutler’s bad-decision rate was so high because of the bad state of the Broncos’ defense. That thought was echoed by Colin Cowherd (one of my favorite on-air personalities) when he was asked about my Cutler-Grossman comparison on the ESPN2 show SportsNation TV (weekdays at 4 p.m.). Quoting Cowherd:

“In Denver, Jay Cutler played with one of the league’s worst defenses. What does that mean? Translation - Jay Cutler was playing from behind. Huge disadvantage.”

I agree that the Denver D was terrible last year (Football Outsiders has it as one of the worst defenses of all time), but I can’t get out of my head that Cutler’s bad-decision pace was just as high in his first two seasons. He hasn’t had a year with a bad-decision percentage lower than 4%, and most of the time he is near or over the 5% rate. This weakness was amplified with the horrid Broncos defense, but it isn’t the only reason Cutler makes mistakes.

Lastly, many Chicago followers agreed with the blog commenter Andrew, who said, “I don’t know where the ridiculous idea that Bears fans gave up on or turned against Kyle Orton came from…Most of us are sad to see Orton go.” Most of the comments I’ve seen around the blogosphere sure made it seem like a collective “Kyle who?” when Cutler was traded, and I took that as meaning they weren’t Orton supporters, but it’s entirely possible Andrew’s take is closer to the pulse of the Chicago fandom.


http://fifthdown.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/cutler-as-a-bronco-it-boiled-down-to-bad-decisions/