rogers park bryan wrote:
Boilermaker Rick wrote:
Terrible. Absolutely terrible. When Emery and/or Trestman are fired we will look at this as a major reason why.
The only way this deal makes any bit of sense is if you project Jay Cutler to be a top 5 quarterback over the next three years. Putting the future of the franchise in his hands for the next 4-7 years and paying him like Tony Romo is about as dumb of a move as I can remember.
No reason to even draft a quarterback now before the 5th round. Even if that quarterback becomes good it doesn't matter as your team is screwed if Jay Cutler isn't the starter making huge money.
It's hard to overstate just how bad of a position the Bears are in here. This is going to make the Romo and Flacco deals look like bargains. Jay Cutler MUST become a player who is at least in the conversation for being top 5 in the league for this to make any sense. People are already questioning how big of a mistake the Romo and Flacco contracts were and Jay Cutler doesn't have the same resume as either.
It's funny, when they traded for Jay Cutler, I said "In order for this to be a good trade, he'll have to play significantly better than he did in Denver", and then he didn't, and now for this to be a good deal for the Bears, he'll have to play significantly better than he did here. We will look back at the Jay Cutler era as a waste of time where we watched the Bears hover in the middle of the league and a quarterback who got paid a ton of money to produce enough for people to defend him by cherry picking statistics to show he's more than an above average starting quarterback.
This really sets the Bears back long term. To be honest, I would have understood completely the franchise tag for this year. This is indefensible. The Bears gained nothing here. We don't even know if another team would have offered a deal as long and as good as this.
And please, for anyone thinking or wanting to say that I just "hate Jay Cutler" please give me your expectations for him next year and for the first four years of this deal. We'll assume the last 3 years are fake anyways. How many playoff appearances? How many pro bowls? How many years will he outperform Aaron Rodgers? How many years will he outperform Matt Stafford? How many years will he outperform Blake Bortles or whoever Minnesota drafts at QB? To put it another way, if Cutler's next 4 years go as well as his past 4 years will you be happy?
The gentleman from New York makes a strong case
No he doesn't, ha. First, this is a 3 year deal. So drafting a QB makes sense.
Second, this is cheaper than (if you could) franchising him for the next 3 years.
He's also wrong about the Flacco/Romo stuff. He'll get pretty much the same deal over the next 3 years as Romo, Ryan, Flacco, Stafford. That's the group of guys I think Cutler belongs in.