Actually, according to other sources, Jay Glazer to be specific, the deal is a 1st and 3rd in 2009, a 1st in 2010 and Kyle Orton for Cutler and a 5th in 2009.

Giving up that much in the form of draft choices is much too much for Cutler. He thrived on occasion in Mike Shanahan’s system but make no mistake, what they run in Chicago shouldn’t be confused with Mike Shanahan’s system.

It would take something major to make a Chicago team another than the Cubs the main focus of my thoughts on April 2nd. This is something major. When I got home today, I actually logged on to the Bears web site before the Cubs. I didn’t know Jerry Angelo had it in him. I figured he was engrossed “Days of Our Lives” up in Lake Forest. This is awesome. Opening Day is four days away and the Bears have a quarterback. What a great day!

That Orton’s locker be kept unused as a shrine!

I am sad to see Cutler leave but also happy. He has an incredible arm but won’t miss the interceptions or stupid stupid mistakes. But through all of this I’m glad the saga has ended…….it was getting very old. I wish him luck and really hope he can become a true leader because I believe that is one thing he did lack.

Guess I will be watching more Bears games this year…..lol.

Lets go CUBS!!!!!

It’s already up on wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Cutler_(American_football)

Just to recall what kind of damage has been done with early picks in the recent past…

2001*: David Terrell, WR
2002*: Marc Colombo, OT
2003*: Michael Haynes, DE, Rex Grossman, QB
2004: Tommie Harris, DT
2005: Cedric Benson, RB
2006: No pick
2007: Greg Olsen, TE
2008: Chris Williams, OT
  * = Jauron was officially in charge of player selection at the time

Of all of them, Greg Olsen and Tommie Harris are the only two that have shown any consistent quality. Angelo gets primary credit for them. Rex at least had some moments, but you never knew what he was going to give you from game to game. The jury is still out on Williams. The rest (and that is half of them) have been total flops, though the blame for all but Benson can be spread around. Still, I won’t be too upset to be ignoring the early hours of the NFL Draft for the next two years.

Obviously Holt and Marvin Harrison are over the hill, but would be great on the Bears for a season or two. Same goes for amani toomer. Hank Baskett had an alright year with the Eagles, Lance Moore had a really solid year with the Saints, more receptions, yards, tds, than any bears receiver by far. There are some other decent ones as well. Any thoughts?

Going to move on from this whole argument for or against Cutler. My stance can be noted through my posts. Cutler isn’t going to do everything by himself, but I fully believe it was the right move at a price I can live with. For all the people talking about “Cutler is a loser”, the fact remains that he didn’t have much of a supporting cast around him in Vanderbilt or Denver, and he made that offense much better than it should’ve been. His 4th Quarter QB rating was usually fine. His interception to attempt ratio is fine. He can’t win games by himself, and that’ll be the same thing here. What we do get, as noted above, is one of the top 8 or so QB’s in the league. We get a guy who has a great feel in the pocket, has zip on the outs and the deep ball, thus opening the field up. More importantly, we get a guy who can attack the different planes of the field. Orton couldn’t do that consistently, and that’s why our offense bogged down quite a bit. What do I mean by this? Some QB’s are very systematic in going through progressions/reads. I’m not saying tunnel vision here, but it’s very automatic for them. After going through them, they reach a point where they attack. With Cutler, we get a guy who can go through and attack all points of the field at the same time. He’s one of the best QB’s in the league at that.

So, what’s next? We need to provide him the strong offensive base. The first and foremost thing is what he lacked in Denver last year – run game consistency. With a healthy Kevin Jones, I have better faith in that, although a young runner would be nice. We need a downfield, jumpball type WR to go with Hester. We have our guy to attack the seam (Olsen) and a nice safety valve in Clark.

Looking at the team

Offensively -

The OL is as good as it’s going to get. Omiyale/Kreutz/Garza, with Beekman/Buenning backuping up is fine for the interior. Great? Probably not. But fine. Pace/Williams/Shaffer is fine for the outside. As it’s been shown in recent years, talent on the OL is important, but consistency is just as important. We’ve got to keep the guys healthy.

TE is set, as is RB/FB. WR is the big offensive need. Holt would be a nice acquisition, but what we really need is a big target on the edge. I’m not saying we shouldn’t go after Holt – we should go after anyone we can get our hands on to upgrade. I think Bennett will be fine out of the slot. Two guys to watch for in the 2nd round would be Mohamed Massaquoi and Ramses Barden. One other option is for the Bears to basically make Olsen a WR and split him out. He has the ability to fill a role. Yes, everyone wants a lead receiver, but the reality is, unless we traded for one, we weren’t landing that player this year (granted, I do have dreams of spinning a 2nd and a later pick for Braylon Edwards (the rumored price was 2nd/5th/Steve Smith), but that’s unlikely. If you don’t have a lead receiver, you look for skillsets to fill what you lack, IMO. Now, Holt is nice. I don’t know how I feel about Matt Jones or Plaxico Burress. On the one hand, both can help us win soon, but you’d like the team to have some sort of standard, I think. Add in both are likely to face suspensions, I don’t know. I guess I’d consider it, but it would only come with huge provisions (low contract, some sort of behavior clause, and so forth … this is assuming that they aren’t in jail).

The bigger issue now is actually defense. Cutler can make our WR’s better. He can make our whole offense better, but he did that in Denver, making Eddie Royal look better than he was, and making average talent better. He didn’t have a defense to lean on.

DL – The interior is fine. We aren’t going to find better, not in a draft that is weak defensively on the interior. Marcus Harrison is a nice “wave” guy, able to play a little 3-tech, some nose. Adams was solid. Another depth piece is a thought, but we’re going to live and die with what we have there. I’d like a young DPR to groom (Designated pass rusher), but the DPR can be found later.

LB – Urlacher needs to be covered at this stage of his career, and I hope the coaches know that. He lacks the range and ability he used to have, and I worry about him in the middle. Maybe that means playing the safeties closer to the middle to cut off responsibility for the deep drops. I don’t know, but he has to be covered. That said, with the contracts we have, at best, LB is only going to be looked at late.

CB – I’d like another CB. Actually, going back to Vandy wouldn’t be the worst thing. DJ Moore is slipping a bit. That said, using a 2nd on a CB seems iffy. Corey Graham is solid, but Vasher seems to be in the doghouse. If Vasher is himself, it’s a nice threesome, and we can find a guy to groom.

S – This is our other big need. We need that stud FS. I’m not a big fan of Bullocks, but he might be okay as the centerfielder. I know the Bears are rumored high on Rashad Johnson, who is sort of similar to Mike Brown, although not the hitter. A guy I really like is Louis Delmas, but it’s not certain he’ll be there in the 2nd for us.

So .. I think with the 2nd/3rd, we should be going WR/S in some order. After that, I’d like to see us add a DL piece. Drafting a QB can’t be ruled out if the value is right, but it’d have to be great value.

1) He’ll make hester olson and forte better. Hester was doing a good job of getting behind defenses last year but would outrun orton’s arm in the process. Now he has a QB w/ a big enough arm to make those deep passes. Olson will be better because now he will get better throws letting him turn upfeild and break tackles, and allows him to run a deep out. Forte will get better since teams would be stupid to put 8 in the box with culter’s arm and hester’s speed, he had a very good season last year despite being the main target of the opposing defense.
2) True we have no really good WR, but if you were a really good WR would you sign w/ the bears last year. By filling this hole it’ll make signing verteren receivers much easeir.