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.