Sure it did. The Bears only gave up one sack in the second half.
I actually was pleasantly surprised that the Panthers weren’t steamrolled during that game. I was expecting a very, very embarassing final score.
Interesting that Steve “Mr. Glass” Smith is injured AGAIN. That guy canNOT stay healthy for an entire season to save his life. When he’s healthy, he’s awesome, but he can’t stay healthy. And without him, yea, I’m looking forward (not) to a Lions-style season for my beloved Panthers this season.
Cutler, whiny little bitch that he is, isn’t nearly as good as his ego tells him he is, and this is just more evidence. There were plenty of replays I saw in which he could have thrown to an open receiver, or thrown in the direction of one, and avoided a sack.
I actually did start to wonder. He’s usually not that hesitant in pass choice.
Who has sulkier facial expressions, by the way. Jay Cultler or Eli Manning?
I just think Eli looks a little on the slow side. (Odds are that he’s not, but he sure looks that way…)
Well he’s certainly posted better statistics, and from I’ve seen I would agree that his individual performance has been better, but the Cutler/Orton trade is a good example of how much context matters when evaluating QBs. In 2008, Kyle Orton started 15 games for Chicago with numbers that were well below average: 58.5%, 5.8 Net Yards/Pass (including sacks), 18/12 TD/Int, -0.9% DVOA (25th).
Meanwhile in Denver, after an above average '07, Jay Cutler had a very good 2008: 62.3%, 7.19 NY/P, 25/18, 22% DVOA (7th).
Yet despite swapping QBs, in '08 and '09 the numbers for “Chicago Quarterback” and “Denver Quarterback” are a lot more consistent than the numbers for “Jay Cutler” and “Kyle Orton.” (Through 3 weeks of this season both had played well – Orton was 4th in DVOA, Cutler 7th – but after this past week Cutler is going to take a major tumble in the rankings while Orton should mostly hold steady.) While it’s possible that the changes in performance are primarily caused by Kyle Orton improving and Jay Cutler regressing simultaneously, the simpler and more likely explanation is that *most *of the change is explained by Denver having a better passing offense than Chicago.
So, while it’s safe to say that Denver got the better end of the trade given that they received two 1st Rounders in the deal, I think we have to view the numbers that say Orton has been hugely better than Cutler with a little skepticism. Like I said before, probably he has been better, but also probably by not nearly the margin the statistics would imply.
I don’t know about Cutler, but as for Eli, that’s just the way he looks. He basically never changes his facial expression, regardless of whether his team is winning by 20 or losing by 40.
His Wonderlic scores, per this Michael Lewis article for the Times Sunday Magazine (page 6), would suggest that he’s quite intelligent:
I still don’t know what you should change your user name to. Maybe we should open up a poll.
I’m a bit late to the discussion since I was at a bar for most of the day yesterday but that Bears game requires comment.
The attention given to the offensive line is a little unwarranted I think. The line was generally terrible to start the season but the changes they made were actually somewhat effective. They’ll never be confused for a good line but Cutler was responsible for probably 6 of the 9 sacks. I really cannot fathom what happens to Cutler when the lights come on in Primetime games. He always seems to struggle in night games, I don’t know if it’s nerves or ego or something else, but the guy is a different QB at night. I’m tempted to wonder if he has some vision issue, but that’s probably unlikely.
The replays of many of Cutler’s sacks showed open receivers downfield often and on some of his incompletions there were other routes more open. It didn’t appear that Jay was holding out for the deep ball specifically because some of those routes were open and in single coverage and he still didn’t pull the trigger. It was a bizarre game to watch and Cutler simply looked lost from the first snap even before the pressure mounted.
The Bears defense was pretty impressive and had the offense done anything at all to help them get some rest they might have kept that game in single digits. The tackling is still worrisome but improved. Chris Harris is a real liability out there when players get into space behind the linebackers, thankfully the pass rush didn’t let that happen much. Awesome strip on Bradshaw by Bowman to prevent the score, shame that the offense couldn’t get the punter some space to flip the field. Urlacher and Tinoisamoa played great games along with Peppers obviously.
I’m sure Giants fans are feeling really great about themselves today and that looked like an impressive win. They probably think they got right yesterday and got their season on track finally, especially after that implosion last week. I suspect they’ll be picked to beat the Texans by many next week after this. I’m not entirely sold. If my perception on Cutler and the rest of the Bears QBs is accurate they really helped that Giants defense out. A team with a quicker trigger at QB might have a lot of success against them and they Giants offense was almost as inept as the Bears.
Hopefully Cutler isn’t too badly concussed. We need him under center and Collins didn’t look like he was going to be that quick to rebound either. I like Hanie a lot and the Bears have been high on him lately but I’m not sure he ever fully healed from that preseason injury. I’m not sure he can handle a starting role and I have no idea who the Bears will be suiting up as the backups if Cutler and Collins are both unavailable. Maybe the results of this game will force the Bears to focus a bit more on running the ball and using play action, on the few occasions this season when they dedicated to the run and used screen plays they looked pretty competent.
I’ll say this: Hanie’s got balls the size of grapefruits waiting for that deepish throw on his very first pass of the season, after watching the #1 and #2 QBs get pasted in the same game.
Agreed. Buit just to play devil’s advocate, he is diabetic. Isn’t vision one of the things that diabetes can mess with?
The implosion last week involved moving up and down the field at will, then making bonehead plays in the redzone. Maybe you’re thinking of the debacle against Indy the week before? That was the implosion, if by using that term you mean having an inept offense.
Your skepticism is fine, but don’t be too sure a better QB would have fared much better. It’s hard not to draw parallels to the 07 Superbowl, since the defense looked pretty much the same. Cutler was a deer in the headlights, while first ballot HoFer Tom Brady shook off his 5 sacks (and many more hits) to mount a reasonable attack in the fourth quarter. Didn’t much matter, though, as Eli was not to be denied that day, and while the defense started sucking wind on the sidelines he mounted two sustained lead-changing touchdown drives to seal the game. Looked to me like that’s exactly what happened again on Sunday.
Another good parallel to draw to 07 was the first two games of the season when the defense let up 80+ points to the Cowboys and Packers. (Both were later avenged in the playoffs that year.) Seemed perfectly reasonable back then to point out that it takes a few games to get acclimated to a new defensive coordinator, and it seems perfectly reasonable again this year. The Giants personnel is well suited to run Fewell’s defense once they get comfortable with it. Except for the glaring hole at MLB, of course.
I’m also pretty optimistic about the Giants’ offense. They’ve been moving the ball pretty well. When they inevitably stop turning the ball over 3 or 4 times a game, they’ll be rather above average on that side of the ball.
On defense, the front four has looked very good all year, getting pressure even when they weren’t getting sacks. I’m still skeptical about the secondary, and I think good QBs will slice them up all year.
I actually forgot about the diabetes. That’s an interesting thought. I’m not sure if the vision issue comes and goes as a diabetic’s blood sugar varies or if it’s a issue for chronically unmanaged diabetes. One could see how night games might make it harder for him to manage it, and whether it’s vision or some other symptom could explain his apparent problem.
Food for thought. Wonder if anyone in the organization has wondered about that and investigated it. There’s been next to no talk about his diabetes since the trade.
I meant implosion as destruction from within. I’d say that describes what happened last week. The Manning Bowl was just a good old fashioned butt kicking.
Time will tell. But I don’t think the Bears QBs sustained any hits that weren’t sacks. That tells me that it wasn’t so much a sustained pass rush as it was a series of QBs holding onto the ball way too long. If the Bears QBs were passing under pressure as opposed to the confused scramble they presented I’d be more convinced.
Impressive ST play by New England tonight.
One might guess that someone had been [del]spying[/del] studying totally legal game film on that.
The concussion story is just a cover to explain why Cutler didn’t come out of the locker room after halftime. The truth is he kept getting sacked in the tunnel.
I wonder if the Onion will just change the name and re-run this story. 
Fun stat of the week: Mario Williams has 10 tackles. 5 of them are quarterback sacks.
This can’t possibly be true. Just off the top of my head, the hit that knocked Collins out of the game wasn’t a sack. I think it was even a completion.
Those Dr. Pepper ads with Michael Strahan look oddly prescient now.
One thing I just realized is the debate that raged last season about class and not running up the score. Most teams will do what the Giants did Sunday night and just kneel it out even when they’re in the redzone. Unlike the Vikings last year running up the score on the Cowboys.
As I understand it (as a diabetic myself), vision problems with diabetes are more of a chronic problem, due to damage to the tiny blood vessels in the eye (the same mechanism is what causes diabetics problems with their kidneys and extremities), rather than an acute condition that comes and goes.
That said, from this article, it is noted that high blood sugar can cause blurred vision, as the eye’s lens swells, but it’s not clear to me if that’s something that happens extremely quickly (i.e., if you have high blood sugar today, is that enough to adversely affect your vision today).