jersey cubs fan

Same. I was resigned to Ballard...but not excited. I was not expecting to be excited about the GM hiring, but for really no good reason I am.

I'm sick of Bernstein's insistence on "forgetting about next year". He's stuck in some mind numbingly dumb "do it the way the Cubs did it" mindset.

I hope this wasn't a different for different's sake situation. But I do like that he is very different from Emery. He's young, not a "lifer" who paid his dues. He didn't spend 20 years teach S&C in college. He's a handsome man in the mold of Theo Epstein..., ok I'm done. My understanding of the Saints is they are not a feature back team, they rotate multiple guys with varying skillsets. I like that type of approach to the roster.

Eastern Illinois Defense End who spent his entire post-college career in NFL front office work. I can live with the storyline.

leave it to the drama kid...

and sully

It sucked either way. It didn't have to suck.

Is the only difference here what the Bears expected vs. what Vegas/you expected? No, because lots of people expected great things from the Bears. The Bears had a chance to be quite good this year. The range of expectations, however, were quite large. If you expected a disaster, go ahead and tag a trade him. The Bears were not in position to expect disaster.

No, I'm saying if you're in QB hell like many teams are currently in like STL (likely expected to be medicore most years) and you're exploring the option of inking Bradford to a long-term contract, drafting one in the 10-15 range, or taking a shot on one later in the draft.... Would that money be better off allocated somewhere else than Bradford (even healthy)? Would that pick be better off on a 1st rounder that often has a much higher success ratio of panning out than QB? Drafting several QBs with several picks later (2 thru 4 as typically west coast offenses require accuracy 1st which tend to drop some QBs) and the one that fits. Teams like GB, NE, etc don't have to worry about that. I guess this also falls into the inability to draft QBs given the high amount of bust ratios. Obviously if you're Indy and you have Manning and Luck at #1, this theory goes out the window. Are you talking about multiple QBs in the same draft? That's nutso. I am a proponent of drafting QBs every 1-2 years. I don't want to go 3 years without drafting a QB, but using a 3rd is a sizable commitment. The Seattle story is not a repeatable model.

Ted and George made it clear Ernie was advising but they were making the decision. I'm not sure what "being in the room" matters when it comes to them interviewing guys.

Cutler doesn't take anything personally. Tagging the QB and doing so with the intent on trading him (not a realistic idea at the time) would have blown up in their faces and led to a disastrous season, one in which the Bears were not expecting to have.

Sure, the Bears just need to find the next Matt Flynn, guarantee him $10m and then draft his immediate replacement in the third round and then recycle that plan every three years.

There's a few elite QB's that maybe someone could say justify their contracts. Then there's a whole middle tier of "meh" QB's that get paid too much because nobody wants to be stuck with the really crappy ones. The "meh" QB's get paid too much and can never live up to the money they get. It's just how the NFL works. The question becomes if that is the way the NFL should work. With the new rookie wage scale, there is a new class of QB's: the relatively cheap ones. And the playoffs have been dominated by the elite QB's and the cheap ones the last couple of years. About 1/3 of the league is non-elite QB's on big deals, and they've had 3 total representatives in the division round the last couple of years: Rivers last year (who lost) and Flacco and Romo this year who are underdogs. The odds of winning a Super Bowl with one of those guys is significantly lower than it was 5-10 years ago. It's pretty low even if you have the best non-elite guy, and Cutler isn't that. The Bears definitely were following a trend, but the question is if it was a trend worth following. It hasn't worked out for many teams lately, and there's a potential of an NBA like treadmill team trend developing. It's a trend you have to follow if there's no alternatives. The cheap rookie QB's you're talking about are cheap because they were drafted...but at positions higher than where the Bears have drafted. I'm making this argument blind, because I haven't looked it up to be sure...but I don't believe there's any successful draftable QB's that the Bears have had available on the draft board but have passed on because they had Cutler. So you're talking about an option that wasn't really an option for the Bears. The Bears haven't had a draft pick higher than 14 since 2005 until this year. The exception is Russell Wilson. The Bears could have theoretically drafted Wilson and have him play at an extremely low cap number for several years (with Mike Tice as his OC). Not sure what the point of considering that a real option is in the real world though.

With hindsight going back to December 13'/January '14? Tag him & then trade him, like KC tried to do with B. Albert (and actually find and accept an offer). There were three options, try and win it all with Cutler, try and quickly rebuild by developing a QB, or win with a patchwork QB. Tagging him was not an option. People need to stop pretending it was. There was never a realistic scenario with a positive outcome in which the Bears tagged and traded Cutler.

There's a few elite QB's that maybe someone could say justify their contracts. Then there's a whole middle tier of "meh" QB's that get paid too much because nobody wants to be stuck with the really crappy ones. The "meh" QB's get paid too much and can never live up to the money they get. It's just how the NFL works. The question becomes if that is the way the NFL should work. With the new rookie wage scale, there is a new class of QB's: the relatively cheap ones. And the playoffs have been dominated by the elite QB's and the cheap ones the last couple of years. About 1/3 of the league is non-elite QB's on big deals, and they've had 3 total representatives in the division round the last couple of years: Rivers last year (who lost) and Flacco and Romo this year who are underdogs. The odds of winning a Super Bowl with one of those guys is significantly lower than it was 5-10 years ago. It's pretty low even if you have the best non-elite guy, and Cutler isn't that. The Bears definitely were following a trend, but the question is if it was a trend worth following. It hasn't worked out for many teams lately, and there's a potential of an NBA like treadmill team trend developing. Relatively cheap ones aren't really a class, since they will only exist for 3-year increments and any 1-3 year trend could include zero.

Yep, one beer ought to put a professional athlete well over .08. He didn't do a breathalyzer, fwiw. Which probably tells you something. That he will get off?

You aren't wrong for saying he had a bad year, many Cutler supporters have made that very same point. You are wrong by characterizing him as an anchor. It's dumb. And even "looking at it more carefully", without knowledge of how this year was gonna go, it was still the right move. Nobody at all thought the Bears were gonna win only 5 games this year. Nobody thought Cutler would play like he did. Even Cutler haters didn't expect this kind of year out of the Bears offense. This season was an entirely unpredictable scenario, and it's unfair to go back and say "why didn't they account for this?" Emery probably got fired because of the Cutler deal...which isn't really fair, as he was mostly praised for it at the time, but he had plenty of other flaws in addition to it, so I'm not upset about it. The only issue I have here is the idea that this season was "entirely" unpredictable. There was a reason Vegas had a relatively low win total number on the Bears despite them being the 4th or 5th highest favorite to win the conference. There was a lot of volatility in the Bears prediction model because the potential for implosion under the wackadoodle Trestman was relatively high.

great googily moogily. Yes, if you miss a quarter of your games heading into a large contract, your injury rate factors. I'm not looking for Favre but in negotiations that should factor. Okay, go be a GM and try negotiating a lower contract for your QB because your shitty team got him concussed and beat up a lot.

You aren't wrong for saying he had a bad year, many Cutler supporters have made that very same point. You are wrong by characterizing him as an anchor. It's dumb.

Cutler has not prevented the Bears from going out and getting players to make the team better. The Bears have not been better because they haven't drafted well enough and their coaches have been horrible (with the exception of Lovie/defensive coaches during most of Lovie's tenure).

great googily moogily.

Very interesting... Just realized the futility of Cle or is lining up something with Mike? First guess is he's lining up with Daddy, but in my opinion he has to venture out on his own more.

Chicago fans love hating their anchors.

Alex Marvez ‏@alexmarvez 11m11 minutes ago Sources tell @NFLonFOX that @Browns OC Kyle Shanahan asked for and was granted his release. QBs coach Dowell Loggains was fired