Week Under Review: The Bears' Jay Cutler era has been a massive waste of time

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Melissa Jacobs
MELISSA JACOBS
2 hours ago
Welcome to Week Under Review, where Week 5 may have planted the seeds to good news on the NFL ratings front, a little engine keeps ticking and a disturbing analogy must be quickly dispersed. But first to Chicago where the Bears are close to admitting they just wasted seven years…

Career journeyman quarterback Brian Hoyer just completed his third straight 300-yard passing game for the Bears. Josh McCown, another career journeyman, achieved the same trifecta for Chicago in 2013. You know who has never strung together three consecutive 300-plus-yard games? Jay Cutler. Statistical disappointment is just part of the reason things seem to be heading south for Cutler’s tenure with the Bears.

Yesterday morning, CBS Sports reported that Cutler has “fallen out of favor” with John Fox and other coaches and that the team may stick with Hoyer once Cutler’s thumb is healed. Whether it happens now or the end of the season, the relationship seems to be dissolving for good, which it should. When the Bears and Cutler officially cut ties, his era will be defined by many words, some of which are not appropriate for this column. Here’s the first word that comes to my mind: nothingness. Chicago has been spinning its wheels for seven years with Cutler as quarterback.


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The strong arm. The pedigree. The sneaky athleticism. The potential that landed him a ridiculous seven-year, $124 million contract with $54 million guaranteed after an injury-shortened 2013 season. The fantasy of Cutler almost always tops the reality. Take yesterday’s 29–23 loss to the Colts. There are writers and “Twitter analysts” who have suggested the Bears win that game with Cutler under center instead of Hoyer: Cutler finds more plays down field, exposing weaknesses in the Colts’ secondary and extending plays. Those things may be true. It’s also entirely possible that deep in the fourth quarter, Cutler has too much faith in his arm strength, doesn’t plant his back foot and fires a football straight into the arms of a surprised Colts defender. Or maybe it’s the first quarter and Cutler decides to chew out his left tackle for a missed block, souring the mood of the entire line for the rest of the game. Or maybe he would have simply gotten hurt on a sack or interception return, like he has time after time for the Bears. Sometimes it’s better to understand a less inherently talented quarterback’s limitations than play with fire.

The problem with Cutler has always been that you literally never know. The inconsistency wouldn’t be such an issue if the hot streaks lasted long enough to mean anything. In seven years, the Bears have made the postseason just once—and even that feels like eons ago. Of course, the Bears’ loss to the Packers in that 2010 NFC Championship Game will forever be memorialized by the image of a sullen Cutler on the sideline far away from teammates after suffering an MCL sprain.

Joe Flacco and Eli Manning are in the same strong-armed and streaky category, but at least they’ve both rode a fiery enough wave to be donning Super Bowl rings.

Chicago has been nowhere close during most of Cutler’s tenure, and the excuse bank has been in overdrive. The defense tanked after Lovie Smith was fired in 2012. The offensive line has been one of the worst in the league, though it has improved this season. For years, before Brandon Marshall and Alshon Jeffery arrived, the Bears trotted out receivers whose names I hardly remember. Current Bears coordinator Dowell Loggains is Cutler’s seventh OC in Chicago. Cutler thrived in Adam Gase’s scheme last year but failed in so many others.

At some point, other quarterbacks worthy of mega-contracts compensate for other weaknesses on their team. That’s why they make the big bucks. Cutler literally needs every single star perfectly aligned, and even then he’d probably be strip-sacked in overtime.

Like any toxic relationship, it’s simply time to move on. There’s too much baggage. Too few wins. Too much diminished hope. Absolutely no traction. Just like ’90s pop music or any trip to the DMV, the Jay Cutler Era in Chicago has been an absolute waste of time.