Having a great game or half would be a start. You're telling me that he carried the team even though he needed to be bailed out by the defense after a terrible interception. It would nice to have a QB that can throw for 300 yards in a game. Especially one he doesn't get sacked in. I know other teams with less talent on offense have QB's that throw for 400+ yards but I am not trying to be greedy.

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I'll always love three turnovers, but the bailing out argument goes the other way too after the D gave up nearly 200 passing yards to Dalton before halftime, and forgot who AJ Green was.

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Kyrie Irving will never win anything as a team's alpha: check
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Ben Simmons is a liability: check
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True but they also took the ball away twice and set up a touchdown. The offense was only able to get 93 yards. Cutler has 1 game of 300 yards in his last 16 games and that came Week 1 of last year. This guy has failed to throw 300 yards in 52 out of 59 games played in a Bears uniform. He threw 3 of those 7 under Ron Turner in his first year. That is horrible. I expect more than 218 yards a game out of a guy that only wants the Bears to pay him $20M a year.

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im with you nas. everyone thinks because the bears won it was a good game. i didnt see a whole lot of difference then the last few years. we have a few better players, and they played like their ass was on fire today, but they barely won. they wouldnt have won if the bengals didnt make stupid mistakes in the 2nd half.

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I'm sympathetic to your Cutler criticism, but at the same time the Bears went 80 yards each on two TD drives, and scored 10 other points off short fields. All of this came against a good team with a well-regarded front seven. The running game didn't work, the Bears were forced to pass, and it worked out.

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Kyrie Irving will never win anything as a team's alpha: check
T.rubisky is a bust: check
Ben Simmons is a liability: check
The Fields Cult is dumb: double check

2013 CSFMB ROY

What looked like a rough schedule for the Bears might not be to bad given what we saw this week from the Ravens, Steelers, Giants, & to a lesser degree the Cowboys.

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They passed for 242 yards. That is not carrying a team. Having long scoring drives has been rare with Cutler at QB but teams do it all the time.

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Bengals will be a top-10 defense this year and was the first rodeo under Trestman's system. Give it a quarter.

Interesting game, lots to digest. Great to start the season with a win against a quality opponent. That said...

Starting from the most obvious point: the D-line was just terrible. I'm sorry, but there's no way to sugar-coat it. This point is usually phrased as "Peppers was invisible," and it's true, he was, but that underplays just how worthless the entire rest of the line was. Melton? McClellan? Wooten? Where the fuck were these guys? It was bad enough they couldn't get any pressure on Dalton, but worse still, they were worthless against the run. I felt the Bengals could, and should, have run the ball nonstop against the Bears in the second half.

Less obvious, but very key, was the Bears' O-line performance. There was some pressure on Cutler, sure, but it was nothing like the constant barrage we've grown accustomed to seeing against quality defenses in recent years. We didn't hear much from Peppers, but we also didn't hear much from Geno Atkins. I didn't like the results in the running game, but considering the line they were playing against, and considering this was 2/5th's of the line's first game in the NFL, I thought the job they did in pass coverage was very good.

Cutler was pretty good, aside from his patented "WTF" interception (in fairness, on the replay, he did get his left shoulder grabbed, and it's possible that caused that throw to be off the mark).

The receivers were good, especially Marshall. That dude is a fucking stud. Bennett looked like a good addition at TE, and Jeffery chipped in, especially with that ridiculous one-handed grab.

The secondary I though did pretty good. You may be inclined to think they were bad, but they had to cover a great receiver, and had no help whatsoever when it comes to the opposing QB being under pressure. You can't blame Peanut or Jennings for not being able to Green for 5+ seconds every play.

The linebackers were disappointing, especially when it comes to the tackling, or lack thereof. The tackling today was very poor, though I've seen this has been the case in other games, so maybe I cut some slack there.

Overall, I'm still cautiously optimistic. I feel we stole this one, and that Cincinnati really helped out with some incredibly stupid shit, especially their failure on three (3!) separate occasions to have the proper number of players on the field. Bears!

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For the very first game with an entirely new coaching Staff and offensive system, the Bears looked pretty good, and will continue to improve, which wasn't possible under Tice & Martz. The Bears are off to a great start.

BEARSSS!!!

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We don’t have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven’t taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much. — Ronald Reagan

I thought 4 years was a good amount of time. Cutler looked the same as he has under every offense.

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Overall, the number isn't great, nor was the offense. But Cutler did make things happen in the second half. He's definitely right there when it comes to reasons the Bears won.

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Not really saying he carried the team, but I don't think whether he carried the team or not is even a productive way of dissecting his and the Bears' performance. The win is what matters, irrespective of accumulated yards.

In any case, you can indeed "carry" a team with only 242 yards passing, or even 162 or whatever. It's not the yards that matter but how many points you help the offense facilitate due to your play. The Bears were down 21-10 near the end of the third, and then Cutler and the offense go for 161 yards over two drives to win the game 24-21. Seems kind of arbitrary to think 60 extra passing yards spread out over four quarters to make his total over 300 would have made a difference in whether we can say Cutler "carried" the team or not. Stafford seemingly throws for over 300 yards every game, but has never won a playoff game either.

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No doubt he looked better than he did in the first half. That being said I don't believe it is unreasonable to expect more than 242 passing yards in a game he didn't get sacked in. That interception should have cost them the game but the defense forced another turnover. I'm probably too critical of Cutler today but that is because I am tired of the constant excuses for a guy that has only managed to throw 20 more yards a game than Orton did in his only full season even though he has superior weapons.

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Yards are not always meaningful.

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Successful calls:

Kyrie Irving will never win anything as a team's alpha: check
T.rubisky is a bust: check
Ben Simmons is a liability: check
The Fields Cult is dumb: double check

2013 CSFMB ROY

I didn't say 300 yards passing = carrying a team. I just said it would be nice to have a QB that can do that. You have to admit paying a guy $20M that only averages 218 yards a game is foolish.

Cutler made a costly mistake and was bailed out and that 1 hand grab could have been another one. It wasn't a great or good performance. I would call it average.

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Then why did we get Cutler? Orton and Grossman won games too. He was brought here to produce and he continues to fail. What would he do if the defense wasn't great at taking the ball away?

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I really don't care one way or the other about Cutler. I'm just saying here that yards always come within the context of the game you're playing, and Cutler's 242 against Cincy, when looked at in context, was at least a solid performance. Ignoring stats for the moment, everyone knows you'd rather have Cutler behind center over Grossman or Orton because Cutler gives you the better chance to win.

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Kyrie Irving will never win anything as a team's alpha: check
T.rubisky is a bust: check
Ben Simmons is a liability: check
The Fields Cult is dumb: double check

2013 CSFMB ROY

Cutler has more talent but we only see flashes of it (for a drive or 2) and it is highly unlikely he'll become consistent at this stage in his career.

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I agree with this, you have to look at the context of numbers within a game. You can't just hang a number on it and say that a guy didn't produce X number of [yards, strikeouts, sacks, home runs, etc.] something that has arbitrary endpoints that frame your narrative is a good or bad player. It's akin to other arguments in countless forums. Some of the best QBs in fantasy play for shitty teams, they are always behind and throwing.

My $.02

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well i'll be damned.... so cutler went for 245 instead of 275, but take a look at that: I CALLED IT. all the way down to the touchdowns by marshall and bennett (even tho, man, that bennett touchdown was an ill-advised throw. that was one of those bonafide "fuck all y'all i'm jay motherfucking cutler AND I CAN MAKE THAT THROW" moments and thank god it worked out.

holy shit, i completely nailed the brandon marshall prediction..... i had him @ 8/90+TD and it turns out he went for 8/104+TD, and when jeffery didn't get the other touchdown, indeed, someone goofy like martellus bennett got it.

so yeah, [[sweeps up the brain shart]] i had a good day with this whole bears thing! keep the train on rolling..... and next week please consider throwing for more than ~8 yards sometime before the second half

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one more lovie reference and im posting a pic of my hairy asshole

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the world will always the world. your entire existence is defined by your response.

Nas with a lot of good points.

It's simple.
If you view Cutler as a game manager, he had a good day.
If you view Cutler as more than a game manager, he had at best an average day.

He put up below average numbers in a win and made some really good plays and mostly avoided mistakes. He was still in my opinion outplayed by Andy Dalton who also didn't have a great game.

Game 1 under Trestman seemed a lot like games under Lovie. The defense makes big plays to give short field position and/or erase mistakes and the offense does just enough to win. The problem is that formula ran out of magic last year.

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I'm not defending Cutler one way or the other, but passing yards is an extremely poor way to rate a QB's performance. It is, in fact, the exact opposite a lot of the time. QB's who play for the losing team or who throw a lot of picks often wind up with over 400 yards passing because they are playing catch up all day. Look at efficiency rating or yards per attempt or TD's.

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The Bears were down most of the day.

I know yardage isn't a perfect way to judge but it's not as bad as you state either. I doubt many above average QB's go in expecting to throw for under 250 yards regardless of the game.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

There was a stretch in the middle of the game where the offense was doing nothing. No point, and not giving a tired defense a rest. That said, the defense didn't do themselves any favors letting AJ Green run all over and allowing a ton of 3rd down conversions. And thanks to Marvin Lewis for the assist with some bad penalties and terrible clock management.

That said its a W against a quality opponent so I will take it, but I think we can all agree that if the Bears play like that against the Giants, Saints or some of the other tougher teams on the schedule they probably aren't going to win.

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I think a better way than yardage is just the eye test. Cutler didn't look great yesterday. The offense looked stagnant many times. That's enough for me - the yardage is irrelevant out of context.

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Agreed, but I'm trying not to draw any grand conclusions from week 1 under a new head coach. Like you said, quality win. Now they need to regroup and figure out how the hell they are going to get a pass rush.

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It seems some people have formed opinions on Cutler and are letting that affect their analysis.

This is way misleading.

Under Lovie, the defense would score touchdowns and the offense would score one TD maybe after several turnovers and they'd win.


That's not what happened yesterday