Jay Cutler Does Not Suck

I knew this would happen.

I'll find it somewhere, but I knew Chicago fans would turn on Cutler. I thought it would happen differently, but during every Bears QBs bad stretches, Chicago fans get angry and use the QB as a scapegoat.

Now I'm not saying Cutler doesn't deserve ANY blame. He absolutely does. He still is making poor decisions and tries to force a LOT of passes (especially to Greg Olson) and he needs to learn to sometimes just take the sack. But even is Cutler DID do that, wouldn't we all just criticize for not taking risks? It's hard to justify a guy who has THREE more interceptions than TDs and I don't care what team you're on, that's just unacceptable and turning the ball over (and TO ratio) is the single biggest reason a team wins or loses a game. But Cutler turning over the call is not his fault.

1) The Offensive Line
Football Outsiders ranks the Bears O-line as the 15th best O-line. Dead even; middle of the pack. However, in reality the offensive line is worse than that. FO ranks pass blocking mainly by how many times the QB gets sacked. It seems they don't take into account how many times the QB gets rushed or thrown out of the pocket, which also falls on the O-line. And because of the awfulness of Olin Kruetz and Orlando Pace, Cutler gets rushed and thrown out of the pocket A LOT, on top of all the sacks. This makes it harder for Cutler to make throws. Now normally sacks and S/100 do not affect a QBs performance, but for Cutler, they do make a factor. Throughout Cutler's career, there is a strong correlation between S/100 and completion percentage and a decently string correlation between S/100 and TD/INT ratio. Essentially, the worse off the O-line is, the worse off Cutler is

2) The Receiving Corps
If you watched the Bears first game, you saw Cutler throw 4 interceptions. You also saw that three weren't his fault. On one play, Johnny Knox went the wrong way on his route so Cutler threw the ball where he was supposed to, unfortunately, there was a Packer there instead of Knox. Now the receiving corps is a lot better than we all expected, but still a cause for a handful of Cutler's INTs. I do however take less blame off of them because as the season progressed, they have gotten better and Cutler still hasn't. I.E.- the last game Bears at Eagles where Cutler was missing receivers like Cutler was missing insulin. However, you put Brandon Marshall, Eddie Royal, and Brandon Stokley back with Cutler and I guarantee you Cutler performs better.

3) Ron Turner
I don't know who Turner had naked pictures of, but can we please burn them so Turner has no leverage over people in the Bears front office. This offense has been bad for a long time with multiple players and coaches. It is obvious that Turner is an awful coach and is not qualified to anything football related, nevertheless a NFL offense. A bad coordinator just hurts his offense and Turner hurts his offense.

4) The Running Game
This absolutely goes back to the offensive line. But an O-line can be great at pass blocking and bad at run blocking (or vice versa). The poor blocking up front causes Matt Forte to be crappy. This means teams don't have to respect the run and can send extra defenders into coverage instead of inside the box. This again just makes Jay Cutler's job even tougher.

This entire offense is really bad and I believe the entire blame should not fall on Cutler for the poor effort and lack of talent of the players around him. Do you all forget just how much you loved Cutler just a month or two ago? This guy is young, the franchise QB, and a guy that will be on the team for a long time. We can build our offense around Jay Cutler and just because he's having a bad stretch, doesn't not mean you should be this hard on Cutler. But what do you think?