ESPN MacMahon: Cutler deal gets Cowboys off the hook

[Screw The Hall]

What an idiotic premise to an article. The idea that one team's bad decision could somehow excuse another team's completely unrelated bad decision is beyond hilarious.

 

[bbgun]

Much more young? Cutler is a year younger than Orton lol.

Can you read? I didn't say "much more young," but rather much more in terms of compensation.

 

[Apollo Creed]

Screw that. For what we gave up he better start producing at an All-Pro caliber every week.

Bingo.

Instead I'd rank as the 30th best WR in football, and that's being generous.

 

[Asklesko]

This McMahon guy is a dumb mother ****er.

 

[YosemiteSam]

Orton wasn't considered an adequate quarterback when he was traded for. Everyone was asking, who is worse Orton or Grossman.

 

[jterrell]

there is little doubt the Cutler trade was worse but all that matters is how each team plays.

dallas traded away too much for rw11 almost without question but it is far too early to say it was a total waste.

the good news is dallas has WRs. it's not like they are going to go into this off-season looking to spend a r1 or 2 on the position much less feel desperate to overpay some free agent.

adding rw11 allowed them to cut t.o. which is exactly the move most laud as the biggest in turning the chemistry around. the media can't out of one side of their mouth blast this trade as awful then celebrate releasing t.o. and ignore the impact one move had on the other.

the bears made a mistake in thinking cutler was a franchise qb which he is clearly not at this point and wasn't in denver. he is surly, immature, moody and lacks accountability. he is also more turnover prone than Romo ever was without the miracle plays tr has pulled out.

now cutler isn't done and young qb's can in fact develop over time but they traded away a solid young qb to get a qb with more talent but less wins while giving up a boatload of picks. worst problem is ever time cutler plays poorly it makes those picks for the Broncos better.

 

[SultanOfSix]

Stupid article title. As if the Cowboys are on the hook for anything with respect to what he's talking about.

 

[Screw The Hall]

there is little doubt the Cutler trade was worse but all that matters is how each team plays.

dallas traded away too much for rw11 almost without question but it is far too early to say it was a total waste.

the good news is dallas has WRs. it's not like they are going to go into this off-season looking to spend a r1 or 2 on the position much less feel desperate to overpay some free agent.

adding rw11 allowed them to cut t.o. which is exactly the move most laud as the biggest in turning the chemistry around. the media can't out of one side of their mouth blast this trade as awful then celebrate releasing t.o. and ignore the impact one move had on the other.

the bears made a mistake in thinking cutler was a franchise qb which he is clearly not at this point and wasn't in denver. he is surly, immature, moody and lacks accountability. he is also more turnover prone than Romo ever was without the miracle plays tr has pulled out.

now cutler isn't done and young qb's can in fact develop over time but they traded away a solid young qb to get a qb with more talent but less wins while giving up a boatload of picks. worst problem is ever time cutler plays poorly it makes those picks for the Broncos better.

Really good post.

 

[jterrell]

Really good post.

TY sir.

FWIW this isn't a second guess for me.
One of the few things I had right was that Cutler wasn't nearly as good as billed.

Shanahan is one of the best coaches a QB can possibly play for. When you fail in Denver with Shanny as coach then you are worse than Jake Plummer/Brian Greise.... That's pretty bad.

Orton always played sound football but needs guys to help him out. He was a perfect candidate to babysit until a better QB could be drafted. He wasn't whining when benched and didn't lose games.

I am not sure the last time a franchise QB was traded....

There was the Favre deal that was forced and the swap of Manning/Rivers but aside from that it's hard to come up with cases. It's definitely a case of buyer beware with these young franchise QBs.

 

[Cowboysfan570]

Orton wasn't considered an adequate quarterback when he was traded for. Everyone was asking, who is worse Orton or Grossman.

Wasn't considered adequate according to who? The Bears were 9-7 last year with one of their losses coming when Grossman had to start against the Titans.

Orton himself completed 59% of passes and threw for 18 TDs and only 12 INTs with a pretty bad Bears receiving corps. He also nearly passed for 3K yards (and would have, if not for injury) which is something that has only been done 4 times in the history of the Chicago Bears franchise.

Kyle Orton was about as good as you can expect anybody to be in Chicago, which has been the worst place to play for QBs for a half century now. They were thrilled to have Rex fricking Grossman in 06 and he played a lot worse than Orton did in 08.

Cutler meanwhile put up pretty pedestrian numbers in a far superior system (for the QB at least) in Denver. He threw a lot more INTs than Orton and not that many more TDs in his time as a starter there. He has now thrown 17 INTs and 14 TDs for the Bears.

That's not something I exactly predicted (I didn't think he would do that terribly) but I sure didn't expect him to play much better than Orton did if he played better at all. Of course Bears fans, desperate for any glimmer of hope on O (see: Matt Forte worship) dismissed all of this and were nearly crying tears of joy in the street when the trade was announced.

 

[Yakuza Rich]

I would think going 6-2 would let the Cowboys off the hook for now. And if they have postseason success, that would just let them off the hook even more.

EVERY team makes horrendous decisions from time to time. The goal is to make more good than bad decisions and hopefully avoid the epic bad decisions that the team can't get around.

Plus, I really think calling Cutler a horrible trade right now is ridiculous. He has a mediocre WR corp, perhaps the worst O-Line in football (yes, even worse than the Raiders) and a very bad defense. If the Bears had kept Kyle Orton, they would probably be doing worse.

The big question for the Bears is when they finally get some decent personnel, will Cutler still be careless with the ball.




YAKUZA

 

[Yakuza Rich]

Wasn't considered adequate according to who? The Bears were 9-7 last year with one of their losses coming when Grossman had to start against the Titans.

Orton himself completed 59% of passes and threw for 18 TDs and only 12 INTs with a pretty bad Bears receiving corps. He also nearly passed for 3K yards (and would have, if not for injury) which is something that has only been done 4 times in the history of the Chicago Bears franchise.

Kyle Orton was about as good as you can expect anybody to be in Chicago, which has been the worst place to play for QBs for a half century now. They were thrilled to have Rex fricking Grossman in 06 and he played a lot worse than Orton did in 08.

Cutler meanwhile put up pretty pedestrian numbers in a far superior system (for the QB at least) in Denver. He threw a lot more INTs than Orton and not that many more TDs in his time as a starter there. He has now thrown 17 INTs and 14 TDs for the Bears.

That's not something I exactly predicted (I didn't think he would do that terribly) but I sure didn't expect him to play much better than Orton did if he played better at all. Of course Bears fans, desperate for any glimmer of hope on O (see: Matt Forte worship) dismissed all of this and were nearly crying tears of joy in the street when the trade was announced.

Orton had a far better O-Line to work with last season. They could actually run the ball and give Orton time. A big reason why the Bears have won the games they have won (which includes being Pittsburgh) is because he can throw on the run. He's needed to do that since his O-Line is terrible.

The Denver defense was horrendous last year and the turnaround they've made on defense is phenomenal. Orton isn't exactly lighting the world on fire despite having great offensive personnel around him. Marshall and Royal are two really good WR's with Stokely being an excellent slot guy. Sheffler and Graham are two good TE's. The O-Line is excellent.

The Bears O-Line is arguably the worst in the league and they have talent in Olsen and Forte, but Forte is pretty much negated by such horrible O-Line play.






YAKUZA

 

[mmillman]

Million dollar arm, 5 cent head.

 

[casmith07]

Cutler's 5 picks last night were legendary.

I don't think he's coachable. I think the Bears are now going to be held hostage like the Campo/Gailey years.

 

[Cowboysfan570]

The Bears O-Line is arguably the worst in the league and they have talent in Olsen and Forte, but Forte is pretty much negated by such horrible O-Line play.






YAKUZA

I'll agree the Bears o-line is very poor, but I don't think it was that much better last year either. Orton did get sacked 27 times in 08 and while hes not terribly mobile, he also wasn't throwing all that many deep balls.

Matt Forte has actually had very little dropoff this year, his per carry average is off by .2 yards at 3.7 vs. 3.9, so I don't agree that their running game is the problem. It hasn't been putting up numbers, but lots of that is because the Bears just haven't been running much at all.

The bigger difference I would say is the D, which has just been god awful over the last stretch at least. But it's up to the QB to overcome those sorts of problems. I absolutely blame their offensive failures on Cutler right now.

Chicago doesn't have very good receivers, but Greg Olson is a good TE, Forte has shown himself to be a pretty good pass-catching RB, and Johnny Knox has played well. Many or most of those INTs Cutler has were just bad throws.