Credit: AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh
When the Broncos drafted Jay Cutler with the 11th pick in ’06 I was thrilled. Being a Vanderbilt fan, I had followed Cutler since his freshman year and knew how tough and talented he was before most of the national media. I just knew that he would thrive under the Hall Of Fame building tutelage of Mike Shanahan, unfortunately that wasn’t to be. After a strong, promising start Cutler started to suffer from over-thinking plays, debilitating team injuries, and a monumental late season collapse to knock themselves out of playoff contention for the 3rd straight year, Shanahan was let go by Denver. Then came the snowball effect.
Denver hired New England offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels and reportedly discussed trading Cutler in a 3 way deal to get Matt Cassel, and the soap opera unfolded. When Jay ended up in Chicago I was psyched again, my mom was a huge Bears fan therefore I grew up a Bears fan. Unfortunately I knew the wide receiver situation was less than hopeful there, downright dreadful. But even with a subpar receiving corps, Cutler still managed to throw for 3,666 yds and 27 tds, unfortunately he also backed that up with a dreadful, league high 26 INTs. Most of those were, again, due to him trying to create too much with too little.
But with the hiring of Mike Martz as o-coordinator in the ’09 offseason, could this be the key to reigning in the talent of the best QB on the board of the ’06 draft? I say there’s a very good chance. Martz, of course, is the offensive guru behind the famed Greatest Show On Turf of the St. Louis Rams teams that scored an astounding 526 points en route to winning Super Bowl XXXIV and over the next 3 seasons scored an amazing 1,569 points, the most by any team in league history over a 3 year span. And yes Martz offense struggled in Detroit and San Fransisco, but neither of those teams had a QB of Cutler’s caliber. A QB whom Martz says “[Cutler] has that Kurt Warner-awareness. [...] He has such a keen sense of where everybody’s at. He sees everything, can diagnose it without even thinking about it, which allows him to excel with what we do.” Pretty big considering Warner ran the aforementioned explosive Rams offense. Watch out for the Bears, they may not contend this season, but this team is only a few key players short of being Super Bowl caliber. Mark my words.
I agree 100%. Cutler’s too talented to not do better this year. Bears really need to get him some receivers though. When your best wideout is a DB, thats a problem.
Don’t sleep on Earl Bennett or Greg Olson!
I mean when half of your team played with you in college, ya gotta do better lol
I grew up in Missouri watching the Chiefs and Rams – who had completely opposite schemes. Chiefs were pound-the-rock and play tough defense; Rams just had the ‘outscore them all’ mentality.
Both teams were good in the late 90′s/early 2000′s, but the Rams were so much fun to watch. Warner would rack up 250 yards through the air in the first half of most games. Although I’m not sure Cutler has the pinpoint accuracy that made Warner a Hall of Famer, he’s got a rocket arm that will definitely be fun to watch!
Agreed, I think with time his accuracy will improve though. He’ll be like Favre but without the selfish attitude.