Cutler's Last Stand

On the one hand, I'm surprised the new Bears regime has named Cutler their starting quarterback. On the other hand, what choice did they have? They certainly didn't hitch their wagons to him, but rather made it sound just a tad better than being saddled with him.
The idea that Cutler hasn't won anything while he's been here is correct, but unfair. I'm not saying that he's the second coming we expected when he pouted his way out of Denver, but he's also not the pariah everyone makes him out to be. It is fair to focus on his turnovers, especially on bad decisions, but consider what he's been up against since he's been a Bear.

1st year - new team, terrible line, terrible receiving corps. Defense was solid.
2nd year - still no real support beyond Matt Forte, and the offensive coordinator was Mike Martz - a guy who had been critical of Cutler in the media previously and had left the league after having become a non-factor. He is out of football completely as far as I can tell. Defense was solid.
3rd year - more Martz, same line (or much worse), lots of yards but not enough wins. Defense was solid.
4th year - Mike Tice becomes OC. WTF. J'Marcus Webb. WTF. Marshall joins the team and Cutler can call his own plays, but that's only because the OC can't. Defense is okay.
5th year - new head coach, new OC, new offensive line that shows promise. Rookie WR that makes Marshall that much better, new TE from outer space. Stars align for offense, Cutler gets hurt. Defense sucks. Lovie guys must have been sabotaging Emery.
6th year - new HC is figured out, OC talks shit to press about Cutler, defense is made up of players who wouldn't make practice squad on most other teams. Hell, special teams sucked.
7th year - this year - yet another new HC/OC. Marshall traded away. Bennett might be butthurt that his pal/mentor was let go (he wasn't super cooperative last year in camp). The Bears needs are mostly at defense, which is no guarantee of improvement, but it also means that the offense might not improve significantly, either.

Each of these failed OCs has tried to put their mark on the offense (except Tice - not sure what he actually did), and the entire offense was upgraded around Cutler under Emery and Trestman. But the rest of the team fell apart. The offense didn't perform as anyone would have expected, but the defense was historically bad, and the special teams was laughable.

Balance is key in football. All three phases need to be average to good to stand a chance in any game. You can start getting into playoff talks by moving one of your phases from good to great, and sometimes having a great group lifts the rest of the team. Conversely, when two of three phases are floundering - and just two years previous were great - it's an anchor for the whole team.

I feel like nobody mentions the number of times Bennett dropped easy passes early in games, where it would have been nice to start with a long drive and a score, but they ended up kicking the ball away instead. For every interception Jay threw, I'd be curious to learn how many drops occurred on catchable balls.

I'm not hitching my wagon to Cutler, either, but I really don't think he's the liability he's been made out to be in Chicago media. I have thought and agreed that he could jog out to the receiver who just scored and pat him on the helmet, but I'm not basing his value as a QB on his celebrations. If John Fox and Adam Gase are the seasoned veteran coaching pair that I think they are, they might use Cutler like Denver did back in Jay's halcyon years. He can run and he's sometimes more accurate outside of the pocket. That's hard to defend.

More importantly, my hope is that the new regime brings balance back so that the losses are not so embarrassing, and the wins don't feel like losses. If Jay's part of it, I hope the haters can find a way to lose the Jay-face.

Cheaters Sometimes Prosper

I have a hard time with cheating in professional sports. I'm conflicted with the morality at play. "Deflate-gate" is just the latest in a long series of issues (not the first for the Patriots, either) that sully the most basic concepts of sportsmanship. Or do they?

As far as deflating a football goes, I am aghast that both teams don't use the same ball in a game. This seems less like cheating and more like the league missing an opportunity to add more parity. The NFL should provide any and all balls, and they should never be in the hands of equipment personnel from either team. Simple enough. I believe that the only way the playing field is actually level is if everyone has the same access to performance enhancement.

Performance-enhancing drugs? If I understand them correctly, many of them are meant to assist in recovery after exertion. I would allow those immediately. Yes, there's the concern of health issues down the road, but any professional athlete is risking life-altering injury every time they compete. Hell, a 25-year-old cricket player just died after being hit by a ball. Doesn't matter if he was on the juice or not. Besides, who can say that steroids are worse than Splenda in the grand scheme of things?

I want to see my favorite basketball/baseball/football/hockey/soccer/tennis/etc. player do what they do best. If that means Adderall to focus or HGH to recover and hit the field faster, how is that more dangerous than telling football players they can only tackle knees? Concussions are a bigger concern, in my opinion.

The bigger travesty than Lance Armstrong getting caught for using PEDs is that he essentially buried the guy who originally outed him. It's pretty well known that everyone in cycling does some kind of performance enhancement; the crime here was slander, and Armstrong was the villain. I could have forgiven him for getting caught doping, but ruining another person's life to maintain his ridiculous lie is unfathomable.

It's worthwhile to consider the concept of cheating within the realm of professional sports. The ultimate draw of sports is competition, but professional sports is also entertainment. The key word is "professional". At the point when sports becomes a career, I believe any advantage an athlete can gain to win or be the best in their position should be available to them, with the exception of substances that are illegal in general.

This is Rich

I know I've discussed the alternate universe scenario where instead of firing Lovie Smith, the Bears actually hired a competent offensive coordinator* instead. The result would have been at least one more year of Lovie ball, but that would have meant that Rod Marinelli would have stayed, and likely Brian Urlacher as well. Cutler would have gotten his wish, Emery would have fixed the offensive line, and who knows where the limit would have been.

Well, we're in this dimension and it's much messier than that. Our cast-off head coach and backup quarterback are floundering in Tampa Bay, and our freshly dismissed head coach is palling around with the two of them on the beach. The conjecture in this primary universe is that McCown and Trestman will rekindle their relationship and prop up the miserable Buccaneers offense.

Keep in mind that this dream team racked up a mediocre 3-2 record in Chicago. Despite his high passer rating and record-breaking performances, it's situational plays that have always eluded Chicago. My guess is that less-than-killer instinct will find its way to Tampa, too. (See what I did there?)

I wish McCown the best. Seemed like a good guy with medium skill and extraordinary personality - the kind of guy radio audiences would like to see at the helm. Until he loses, of course - then you need a gunslinger. Where would we find one of those?

Finally, word on the street (network?) is that Rex Ryan is all but hired for the Atlanta head coaching position. I'm not sure he's the answer here, but he's universally seen as the best candidate currently available. They haven't even talked to him yet.

My level of hope is significantly lower than it was this time last year. Maybe I'll check back in for the 2016 season. I think the slogan has to change from #beardown to #bearit.

A Bitter Bears End

Well, the Cubs and Hawks have been able to revitalize their franchises. I'm very much hoping that they Bears can do the same. Everyone (myself included) thought they had enough talent on the roster to be competitive this year. I still think that's true on the offense.

I'm a little surprised that they got rid of the GM. I had trepidation about the head coach, but there were pieces that needed to be put into place and the GM got them, mostly. I guess there was never as meteoric a shift in the defense, though. That was a difficult position, with all of the aging pro-bowl players trying to play out their contracts under a new defensive scheme.

I think they have to hold Cutler (and anyone else) until there's a new GM and head coach - especially since they're on the hook for so much guaranteed money - but draft a future QB.

Regarding Cutler, it's hard to ignore his numbers - he's the best QB for stats in my lifetime, but this is the worst Bears team I can remember. That might become Cutler's legacy. He performed well individually in Denver, but almost never got to the playoffs. The intangibles (leadership) are missing, and could be the difference between a Jay Cutler and a Brett Favre.

When Lovie got fired, the goal was to put the staff in place to give Cutler the chance to succeed he hadn't yet gotten since choosing to come to Chicago. It sure looked like they did that. The expected attrition in the defense also occurred, but when the offense floundered, there was essentially nothing left on which to hang a hat.

When the search for a head coach to replace Lovie was underway, I really hoped they would talk to Dave Toub to fill his shoes. I still believe that moving Toub to HC and somehow holding on to Rod Marinelli would have meant that Urlacher could have played another year and retired on his own terms. I think there wouldn't have been the drop off in defensive play that we saw last year, and then Toub and a new OC could have focused on updating the line and the overall offensive scheme.

In fact, with Toub as HC, they still could have hired Joe DeCamillis and there probably wouldn't have been as much of a drop in production. Instead, Toub has continued his thorough coaching style in Kansas City. Just a thought - Mike Ditka was a special teams coordinator before taking the reigns with the Bears.

One more thought - the Bears might want to find a GM, coach, or coordinator from Boston. Tom Thibodeau and Theo Epstein seem to be working so far...

The Cherry on the Poop Sundae

An interesting postulate was posed on the radio this morning - if you swapped Cutler for Rodgers, would the Packers suck and would the Bears be elevated? Seems like a pretty obvious answer (yes to both), but it's predicated on other stuff, like the connection with coaches, management, and fans, for example. And really, it's a moot point now.

This was the "no excuses" year for Cutler, but if that's how it was presented, and we already know him to be a little sensitive and hot-headed (that's why he's in Chicago in the first place), then I can see why maybe having all of the tools he needed still didn't pan out as expected.

And so this morning, they announced that Cutler would not be the starting QB this week. I had already benched him in my fantasy league, because he was a liability last week, and not for lack of ability. This has become a mental issue.

Shame on the Bears for letting it get to this point, too. I don't doubt that Aaron Kromer was right in what he leaked to the NFL Network reporter. And if that's true, shame on him for not taking action instead of whining about it to the press. That stuff should have been weeded out in the pre-season.

Worse, Cutler is the highest-paid QB in the league right now. His numbers have been good - impressive, even - but the big one that keeps evading him is playoff wins. Instead of rewarding him, make him earn the money with playoff wins. Make him gamble on himself - especially since the Bears rigged the deck in his favor.

Now, you have a highly-touted and respected coach making a roster change for garbage games. Some possible reasons:

1. They are genuinely interested in seeing what Clausen can do. I find this to be the least likely scenario. If they were truly interested, there were blowout games where he could have seen a few minutes during the season. Plus, the rest of the team has already checked out, so his supporting cast will be limited in effort.
2. Deferred punishment. Possible - there is conjecture that they planned to bench him last week but the Kromer debacle put that on the shelf so as not to appear to pile on. As I said above - the timing on the Kromer thing could not have been worse. This option makes sense based on Jay's play and demeanor during this past game.
3. Indictment of Emery. I have been amazed at the pieces Emery has put together on the offense. There are few weak spots, but they're not gaping holes, and they've even withstood injury this year. This was done to give Cutler the tools he needed, but the cost was neglect on the defensive side of the ball, but more importantly, at backup QB. With all those things in place, what happens if Cutler gets hurt? There's a placeholder at best, not his successor, in the wings.

If Clausen comes out swinging and looks good in some garbage time, there is the possibility that he plays himself into a supporting role next year. If they ultimately part ways with Cutler (or he takes a walk), Clausen's suddenly the de facto starter. And then we're back to the dumpster fire of an offense from previous years, but no defense to mop up the mess.

From a macro perspective, what head coaching candidate would want to stick his neck out and take a shot at running this team in the current state it's in? What pro-bowl safety would want to come in and call plays and align players in a scheme that has no personality, and mostly broken personnel? I'm averse to change, but I am having a hard time seeing the light at the end of the tunnel here.