What happened to Jay Cutler after such a prolific start (statistically) to his career

[roy_miami]

So Football Outsiders passing offense stat correlates quite well with QB play and I noticed that Cutler had one of the best starts over the first two season of all QBs since they started tracking this. In fact of all the QBs I looked at only two or three had better starts. One issue with this stat is its a team stat measured over 16 games, so if the QB goes out for a game or two its skewed. Here are the rankings for Cutler led offenses (when he played the majority of the games):

2007 9th
2008 7th
2009 23rd
2010 28th
2011 30th
2012 25th
2013 7th
2014 16th
2015 13th

And here are the other QBs that started off great over their first two seasons according to his metric:

Roethlisberger
2004 6th
2005 6th


Brady
2001 10th
2002 10th


Rodgers
2008 10th
2009 9th


Wilson
2012 4th
2013 8th


Rivers
2006 3rd
2007 13th


P. Manning
1998 13th
1999 4th


Matt Ryan
2008 4th
2009 13th


Romo
2006 7th
2007 4th


Palmer
2004 12th
2005 5th


Warner
1999 1st
2000 3rd

Cutler had one of the better starts of all these guys but turned into one of the only duds, besides Palmer but he wasn't the same after the ACL. So what the hell happened? It can't be just coaching as he had a top 10 passing offense under Trestman as well. Maybe that trade just sucked the life out him and he lost confidence. I had forgotten about the hot start to his career to be honest (which was very similar to Kaepernicks), maybe there is a chance he could be very good to great for us. And it sounds like he was very impressive in training camp today, especially considering he walked off the street yesterday.

 

[Gsmack_42]

He went to Chicago.

 

[AZStryker]

That's why people shouldn't over-rely on just one stat or subjective formula. Great for an agenda but it is often riddled with holes and unanswerable questions.

 

[Dsteve]

Some of it had to do with his attitude when on a dumpster fire team. Remember Palmer on the raiders? Dude threatened to retire.

 

[BlueFin]

Rotating door coaches...poor team management...trying to do too much to compensate for the rest of the team...coupled with a gun slingers mentality....recipe for what we've seen.

What would have happened to Brett Favre on bad teams?

Cutler had his best year under Gase....with backup receivers.

If he stays healthy...I look for a career year.

 

[Fin Thirteen]

Lot of opinion-adjusting going on toward Cutler, now that he's with us.

Some of that is probably the realisation that maybe he isn't as bad as his reputation holds him out to be. This thread somewhat validates that.

But let's not pretend that his career to date has been the best it could be, even in sub-optimal team circumstances. He's been injury prone, mistake-prone, 4q-loss-prone.

Gase improved him in Chicago by emasculating him somewhat, in terms of risk taking. That was probably overdue, but the result wasn't stellar, merely pretty good.

I just think all the fans on here scrabbling to find reasons to justify a 180 on Cutler are setting themselves up for some disappointment. At worst, he'll be injured and Moore will play. At best, he'll be an approximation of Tannehill under Gase - solid but needing the playcalling/scheme to cut down errors and unlikely to be able to take the team on his back.

 

[TannDaMan17]

Lot of opinion-adjusting going on toward Cutler, now that he's with us.

Some of that is probably the realisation that maybe he isn't as bad as his reputation holds him out to be. This thread somewhat validates that.

But let's not pretend that his career to date has been the best it could be, even in sub-optimal team circumstances. He's been injury prone, mistake-prone, 4q-loss-prone.

Gase improved him in Chicago by emasculating him somewhat, in terms of risk taking. That was probably overdue, but the result wasn't stellar, merely pretty good.

I just think all the fans on here scrabbling to find reasons to justify a 180 on Cutler are setting themselves up for some disappointment. At worst, he'll be injured and Moore will play. At best, he'll be an approximation of Tannehill under Gase - solid but coached to have the playcalling cut down errors and unlikely to be able to take the team on his back.

THIS IS WHAT FOOTBALL IS ALL ABOUT!!! You don't want your QB to take many risks, you want them to be as conservative and effective as possible (e.g Bob Griese). Is it a coincidence that a guy like RW wins the SB with a dominant defense and heavy rushing attack. And as soon as they got away from that formula and tried to put more on RW's plate they have struggled? Why do you think Pete Carol is talking about getting back to the run game this year, he knows what football is about and that's why he is a champion.

“We lost 100-something runs last year,” Carroll said. “And that was basically the story. That was basically the tale of why everything came about as it did. The defense had to do some more stuff. We had to throw the ball more. We had to pass protect more and all of that because the running game got knocked up.”

 

[russianbear]

all you have to do is look at his temperament and composure to understand who and what cutler is...he's a big arm without any real charisma...it sounds stupid but that slouchy attitude translates to mistakes on the field and a habit of indifference when the game is starting to get out of reach

i have faith in his arm, not so much in his attitude

 

[Tannchise]

I am not sure if we can hang our hat on the way too far past. Knowing what he did in 2015 under Gase is the standard, and if Gase says he didn't forget much, why not hang our hats on that. Miami has build a core group of highly skilled players to surround the qb. We have faulted the OL for years under RT, let's see if that continues

 

[DANTODUPER]

Lot of opinion-adjusting going on toward Cutler, now that he's with us.

Some of that is probably the realisation that maybe he isn't as bad as his reputation holds him out to be. This thread somewhat validates that.

But let's not pretend that his career to date has been the best it could be, even in sub-optimal team circumstances. He's been injury prone, mistake-prone, 4q-loss-prone.

Gase improved him in Chicago by emasculating him somewhat, in terms of risk taking. That was probably overdue, but the result wasn't stellar, merely pretty good.

I just think all the fans on here scrabbling to find reasons to justify a 180 on Cutler are setting themselves up for some disappointment. At worst, he'll be injured and Moore will play. At best, he'll be an approximation of Tannehill under Gase - solid but needing the playcalling/scheme to cut down errors and unlikely to be able to take the team on his back.

The part in which I deffer is that at best, we could see an improvement over Tannehill. The reason is that if Cutler develops chemistry with some receivers, I do see some particular things that he can do better than Tannehill, he has better pocket awareness and has faster decision making. He also has somethings he do worse than Tanny, but I think if Gase somehow develops the up tempo with Cutler, the results could be very promising.

I think is not likely that it will happen, but if good things happen the limit could be above of what Tanny can do.

 

[BlueFin]

Lot of opinion-adjusting going on toward Cutler, now that he's with us.

Some of that is probably the realisation that maybe he isn't as bad as his reputation holds him out to be. This thread somewhat validates that.

But let's not pretend that his career to date has been the best it could be, even in sub-optimal team circumstances. He's been injury prone, mistake-prone, 4q-loss-prone.

Gase improved him in Chicago by emasculating him somewhat, in terms of risk taking. That was probably overdue, but the result wasn't stellar, merely pretty good.

I just think all the fans on here scrabbling to find reasons to justify a 180 on Cutler are setting themselves up for some disappointment. At worst, he'll be injured and Moore will play. At best, he'll be an approximation of Tannehill under Gase - solid but needing the playcalling/scheme to cut down errors and unlikely to be able to take the team on his back.

A quarterback can't succeed without a team around him....Chicago had a poor team in Jay's Gase year...which is why some feel he could blossom here.

It's easy to be negative....but we have seen quarterbacks previously written off as busts explode in a great situation late in their careers...Jim Plunkett is a prime example.

 

[TanneChamp17]

You can use a lot of the excuses people use for Tannehill here for Cutler. They haven't had steady well managed teams around them, never really had solid footing to launch a career off of.

While things seem to be coming together in Miami this year, and for the years to come, so whoever is here should have a few good seasons ahead.

 

[JJM_7]

I think this is without a doubt the best situation he could possibly be in at this point in his career. Will that translate into a career year for him? Probably not, but that's because there are other factors involved. Is he motivated enough to play his best football? Can he stay healthy? Will he be able to develop good chemistry with his weapons in a short period of time? How will he deal with adversity when it inevitably comes?

At the very least, it's going to be pretty interesting to see the outcome to these questions. I for one am more excited now than I was on Thursday after Ryan went down. Still don't have much faith in our season being a success, but I know I'm looking forward to week 1 for sure.

 

[GasPed]

I do see some particular things that he can do better than Tannehill, he has better pocket awareness and has faster decision making.

This is probably the biggest question mark about Jay. Pre-Gase, Cutler was not known for pocket awareness or quick decision-making - in fact it was the exact opposite. He tended to be a "see it, throw it" guy relying on his arm strength to slam it in to his receiver, rather than trusting the play and throwing to spot. He tended to hang on to the ball too long and get strip sacked. Whether through lack of prep or lack of on-field awareness, he too often seemed confused by what was unfolding and would throw to the wrong guy or just hang on too long and break the play.

Having said that, Gase certainly helped curb those tendencies. And so now we wait - I'm of the mind that pre-season will only tell us if Jay still has his arm and athleticism. It won't be til the real season, when we're using live ammo, that we'll really be able to tell if good Jay or evil Jay is back. Should be entertaining.

 

[roy_miami]

According to this stat there has been 3 different Jay Cutlers. His first two seasons under Shannahan in Denver he was a young gun and well on his way to being an elite. Then his first 4 seasons in Chicago he was horrible, like Mark Sanchez/Geno Smith bad. And the next 3 seasons he was like above average, or a tier 2 QB like a Cam Newton or Matt Ryan. I think we could be pleasantly surprised.