I’d totally rewatch Bears games that way. And I’d scan through to get looks at the breakdowns on big plays and see what WRs a QB misses who are open. It’d be an awesome way to decipher line play on both sides, from above you could see stunts and pulls and blitzes. It’d be all kinds of awesome. I’d pay real money to have access to this.
Maybe with that kind of film you’ll come to the conclusion that the Bears gave up way to much for an overrated, not so bright, easily pressured QB with poor mechanics and a bad attitude.
You know, I was just thinking about reviving the topic to see how you felt about the trade now that we see how that “windfall” worked out for the Broncos. Orton and the Broncos are 12-20 since the trade and 6-20 over the last 26 games. Orton is on the verge of being benched. That windfall certainly helped the Broncos and hurt the Bears. :rolleyes:
Funny how when the trade was made and Orton had a winning record and Cutler didn’t, the team records weren’t important, but now they are. Amazing how that worked out.
Orton’s QB ranking this year: 18th.
Cutler’s QB ranking this year: 26th.
Orton’s QB ranking last year: 15th
Cutler’s QB ranking last year: 16th.
One of the benefits of not overpaying for a middle of the road player is that you can easily bench him. With Cutler’s price and the crap in line behind him, he could suck (say being in the bottom 7 of starting QB’s in the NFL, just pulling numbers out of the air at completely random ways) and still not get benched.
Keep setting that standard high. Hey, the Bears are better than Matt Millen’s Lions too!! Woo Hoo.
Imagine having Kenny Britt, Jeremy Maclin, Hakeem Nicks, Mike Wallace, Dez Bryant, or Percy Harvin in that Bear WR crew. Or having Dan Williams or Brian Price on that D Line. Maybe Brian Bulaga, Sebastian Vollmer, Rodger Saffold, or Alex Mack on that O Line.
You’re happy with Cutler. I’m happy with the Bears having Cutler and no WR crew, interior pressure, and a shitty O Line. We’re both happy.
The point I’m making is that you keep treating the stuff that the Bears gave up in the deal as some crazy decision. I’m highlighting that all those draft picks Denver got have amounted to essentially nothing. Draft picks are important, but they are a crap shoot. More of them fail than succeed. Getting a proven commodity is often a better choice. Draft picks are lottery tickets.
To hear you tell it, the Broncos should be competing for conference championships with all those picks they gathered. It’s been three years, it’s not looking like that paid off at all. Maybe the Bears would have done more with those picks than the Broncos did, but their track record isn’t very good there. It was a smart trade for this organization then and it’s proven to be a smart one now. If the Bears were the best talent evaluators in the league then I’d have been more upset about the loss of those picks, but they aren’t. We’ve never had a physically gifted QB here, we do now. The Bears supporting players all suck, but they don’t suck because of the trade, they suck because of poor drafting and disinterest in free agency. We could have had similar players had we not fucked up the Chris Williams pick, we could have had similar players had we not fucked up the Steven Paea, Jarron Gilbert and Juaqiun Iglesias picks.
The one thing I can say with certainty, there wasn’t a starting QB available in the draft that the Bears would have had a shot at. Starting QBs are gold, Denver will never win anything with Orton and Tebow. The Browns will never win with Colt McCoy, the Dolphins will never win with Henne. You get starting QBs at the top of the draft are through a trade with very few exceptions which are the equivalent of hitting the lottery.
Cutler is better than Orton. How much better is a matter for debate, but in the reality is that the Bears gave up lottery tickets to get him. Those lottery tickets turned out to be worthless for Denver so they won the trade. It’s a small victory until Cutler improves and/or the Bears actually find some WRs, but to hear you tell it you’d think the Broncos were on the verge of a dynasty as a result of the modern day Hershel Walker trade.
12 games into his career, with no WRs, and Colt McCoy is already a bust? I’m not sure a Bears fan is any position to evaluate QBs.
He might not be a bust, but he’s a game manager, just like Orton. He’s never winning that team anything. That’s the kind of QB you get a chance to draft in the 2nd and 3rd rounds.
He’s on his 2nd head coach and OC, and had an abbreviated training camp to learn the new offense.
It’s much too early to evaluate.
I said that for a long time watching Cade McNown, Rex Grossman, Kyle Orton, Chad Hutchinson and a host of other “smart kids who won in college and have a great work ethic”. Physical skills matter, a lot. McCoy doesn’t have them. There’s a 5% chance that his arm gets stronger and he puts on 25 pounds of muscle, but it’s a long shot.
I’m not sure that the Browns organization is quite at the Bears’ level of ineptitude in terms of developing a QB (they’re close, though they finally have a front office that seems to know what it’s doing), but I don’t think being a Bears fan has put you in the best position to evaluate QBs, seeing as how the Bears have had one decent QB in the last 30 years.
FWIW, Colt McCoy isn’t doing any worse than Drew Brees did to start his career.
[QUOTE=Omniscient]
Those lottery tickets turned out to be worthless for Denver so they won the trade
[/quote]
I really hope that the Bears management has the same point of view as you do. Instead of focusing on what the Bears give up in deals, always look at what the incompetents got. That’s the kind of focus I want the Bears to have.
The Bears gave up three shots, including 2 first round shots , at a legitimate #1 NFL WR’s and starting offensive and defensive linemen, all huge gaps in the current team. And they gave up a quarterback who has bben higher rated since the trade. All for a lesser rated QB, who still hasn’t come close to living up to his perceived talent level. How that is a “win” is beyond me. But please, do continue to hold the Bears to the “better than teams than suck” standard.
For context, in terms of “winning” a trade you lost on paper, I’d say the Giants “won” the Eli for Rivers/Merriman trade to a much greater degree than the Bears “won” the Cutler/Orton trade.
Looks like the Bengals/Jags game is going to be played in 40mph sustained winds with 60mph gusts…and two rookie quarterbacks. The entertainment quotient could be really low or really high depending on how comical and keystone cop-ish you like your football.
Went ahead and started a week 5 thread instead of waiting an hour into the games trying to figure out why no one else started one 
I bet you said that watching Drew Brees, Matt Schaub and Matt Hasselbeck too.
Schaub and Hasselbeck were prototypical NFL QBs, their physical gifts were never questioned. Brees is that 5% guy that I mentioned. But, most critically you highlight a fine point. 3 QBs who were traded for. Teams that wait around to draft a QB after the top 10 picks tend to never find a quality player, it happens rarely. The Bears played that game for 2 decades.
I know you love trying to poke the Bear here, but this “Orton is better than Cutler” theme is idiotic. If the Packers had to chose between the two you’d be lying if you said you’d prefer Orton, it’s not close.
Cuter with Denver in 2008.
8-8 W-L, 384/616 Comp/Att, 62.3% Comp, 4526 yds, 25 TDs, 18 INTs
Orton with Denver in 2009.
8-7 W-L, 336/541 Comp/Att, 62.1% Comp, 3802 yds, 21 TDs, 12 INTs
Orton with Chicago in 2008.
9-6 W-L, 272/465 Comp/Att, 58.5% Comp, 2972 yds, 18 TD, 12 INTs
Cutler with Chicago in 2009.
7-9 W-L, 336/555 Comp/Att, 60.5% Comp, 3666 yds, 27 TDs, 26 INTs
The two QBs traded places and by comparing their numbers on each team you can assume that the surrounding talent levels were reasonably comparable. Cutler is worth 700 yards passing, 7 TDs (and yes, 10 INTs) and a higher completion percentage. Cutler hasn’t lived up to expectations and Orton has wildly outperformed expectations, but there’s just no way you can truthfully say that Orton has been better. Orton’s just been asked to do a lot less because he’s a very limited player.
Has the trade been wildly successful? Of course not. Has Cutler failed to fulfill expectations? Yes he has. Was the trade still a smart move? Absolutely. Yes, the Bears might have fulled holes at WR and OL with those picks (The D line isn’t really lacking) or they might not have. But even if they’d have batted a 1000 with those picks, they’d still be without a QB and that’s just untenable in this league. It doesn’t matter how much talent you have if you don’t have a QB.
The Dolphins and Texans have outstanding OLs but their QBs have held them back for the last 3 years. The Steelers and Packers have had pretty crappy O lines for the last 3 years or so and their QBs still carried them into the playoffs every year. There isn’t a single scenario in which I’d rather the Bears had another Gabe Carimi and a Julio Jones to pair with Orton over what they have now. If Orton goes to the bench next week and Tebow keeps the starting gig Orton might never get another starting job again. This is the guy I’m supposed to regret losing?
Pop quiz: what do Brees, Schaub, Hasselbeck, Ben Roethlisberger, Tom Brady, Josh Freeman, Kyle Orton, Joe Flacco, Tony Romo, Brett Favre, Matt Cassel, Ryan Fitzpatrick, and… Jay Cutler have in common?
They were all drafted outside the top 10.
Exactly - and the Bears gave away two first round picks and still don’t have a QB. You can argue that Cutler is better than Orton (I wouldn’t), but you can’t argue that Cutler is better than Orton and two first round picks.
Sure, the Broncos wasted the first rounders, but the Bears’ braintrust is usually pretty good at spotting first round talent. Incidentally, the third round pick the Bears also gave up eventually went to Pittsburgh, who selected Mike Wallace.
[quote=“Really_Not_All_That_Bright, post:138, topic:598328”]
Pop quiz: what do Brees, Schaub, Hasselbeck, Ben Roethlisberger, Tom Brady, Josh Freeman, Kyle Orton, Joe Flacco, Tony Romo, Brett Favre, Matt Cassel, Ryan Fitzpatrick, and… Jay Cutler have in common?
They were all drafted outside the top 10.
Brees -Traded for
Schaub - Traded for
Hasselbeck - Traded for
Roethlisberger - Drafted 11th
Brady - Rare exception
Freeman - Drafted 17th, traded up for
Orton - Traded for
Flacco - Drafted 18th, traded up for
Romo - Free Agent signing
Favre - Traded for
Cassel - Traded for
Fitzpatrick - Free Agent signing
Cutler - Drafted 11th, traded up for AND traded for
I’ll let you look up what those teams with decent quarterbacks gave up for those players when the traded up. You don’t get good waiting around for a QB to fall to in the later rounds. You can get lucky every once in a blue moon, but smart teams go out and get starting QBs. They are too important to leave to the fates. You can hate Cutler all you want, but I’ll never argue against being proactive in finding a QB.
Actually I can, there’s a test case for it in Denver going on right now.
They have? We’ve got Urlacher and Tommie Harris who were good and Greg Olsen who was okay. Let’s look back at the last 20 years.
1991 22 Stan Thomas Offensive tackle Texas
1992 22 Alonzo Spellman Defensive end Ohio State
1993 7 Curtis Conway Wide Receiver Southern California
1994 11 John Thierry Defensive end Alcorn State
1995 21 Rashaan Salaam Half Back Colorado
1996 13 Walt Harris Defensive back Mississippi State
1997 — No Pick — — [t]
1998 5 Curtis Enis Half Back Penn State
1999 12 Cade McNown Quarterback UCLA
2000 9 Brian Urlacher Linebacker/Safety New Mexico
2001 8 David Terrell Wide Receiver Michigan
2002 29 Marc Colombo Offensive tackle Boston College
2003 14 Michael Haynes Defensive end Penn State [v]
2003 22 Rex Grossman Quarterback Florida [v]
2004 14 Tommie Harris Defensive tackle Oklahoma
2005 4 Cedric Benson Half Back Texas
2006 — No Pick — — [w]
2007 31 Greg Olsen Tight End Miami
2008 14 Chris Williams Offensive tackle Vanderbilt
2009 — No Pick — — [x]
2010 — No Pick — — [x]
2011 29 Gabe Carimi Offensive tackle Wisconsin
You really haven’t been paying attention.
700 passing yards? That’s disingenuous since Cutler passed 80 more times. Before doing the math I’d rather have Orton based on those numbers, but I could be swayed if Cutler has a decent edge in YPA.
Cuter with Denver in 2008.
62.3% Comp, 7.35 YPA, 25 TDs, 18 INTs
Orton with Denver in 2009.
62.1% Comp, 7.03 YPA, 21 TDs, 12 INTs
Orton with Chicago in 2008.
58.5% Comp, 6.39 YPA, 18 TD, 12 INTs
Cutler with Chicago in 2009.
60.5% Comp, 6.61 YPA, 27 TDs, 26 INTs
If I had to take one at gunpoint I’d go with Orton, but they’re pretty much equally meh.