Monday night’s Chicago Bears’ victory against Green Bay did not create a quarterback controversy.
Certainly, backup QB Josh McCown’s sharp execution of the Bears’ offense against the Packers and two weeks ago against Washington gives the Bears the luxury of patiently waiting for starting QB Jay Cutler to fully recover from the groin injury he sustained on October 20 that initially was expected to sideline him for at least four weeks.
Reports now indicate that Cutler could start as early as this week against Detroit, just three weeks from the date he suffered the injury.
The last six quarters of McCown’s surgical execution of the offense has reinforced the notion that Bears’ head coach Marc Trestman is synynomous with successfully coaching quarterbacks of all shapes, sizes, pedigrees and skill sets. When Trestman was hired by the Bears, former quarterbacks Steve Young and Rich Gannon, who played under Trestman when he was their offensive coordinator, lavished praise on Trestman for ingeniously designing schemes that maximize quarterbacks’ strengths.
We are not minimizing McCown’s recent success, but the journeyman whose quarterback rating in four seasons with Arizona was 72.1, in one season with Oakland was 69.4 and two seasons with Carolina was a woeful 39.6 is further proof that Trestman’s system helps elevate the quarterback and not vice versa. In relief of Cutler, McCown has completed 36 of 61 passes for 476 yards and three touchdowns without an interception for a QB rating of 100.2. Cutler is also enjoying the best QB rating of his eight-year career despite having played several seasons under head coach and offensive guru Mike Shanahan in Denver, where he was surrounded by an abundance of talented skill position players.
Simply put, wherever Marc Trestman has served as an OC or head coach, the quarterbacks under his tutelage have succeeded, regardless of their prior resume. Trestman was the OC when Bernie Kosar last guided the Cleveland Browns to the playoffs in 1989. In 1995, he was the OC of San Francisco when Steve Young guided the 49ers to an 8-3 record. When injury sidelined Young, Trestman helped second-year QB Elvis Grbac lead the team to a 3-2 record and 92.3 QB rating. The following season, Young tallied a 9-3 record in his twelve starts and Grbac a 3-1 record in his four. Yet, when both were sidelined in a late October game at Houston, Trestman helped guide third-string QB Jeff Brohm to 21 of 34 passing for 189 yards, one touchdown and no interceptions in a critical 10-9 victory.
In 1997, Trestman was OC when Lions’ QB Scott Mitchell passed for 3,484 yards, fourth most in franchise history, and led the team to the playoffs. He was the OC for the Arizona Cardinals the following season when second-year QB Jake Plummer led the team to a 9-7 record and its first playoff berth in sixteen seasons. Perhaps Trestman’s greatest accomplishment was serving as the Oakland Raiders OC when journeyman QB Rich Gannon, in his 16th season, won the league’s MVP and guided his team to a Super Bowl berth. Finally, in his successful stint as the head coach of the Montreal Alouettes of the Canadian Football League, his starting QB, Anthony Calvillo, won back-to-back MVP awards in 2009 and 2010.
Without exception, quarterbacks, whether journeymen, backups or last-resort options like Jeff Brohm, have excelled under the cerebral Trestman’s guidance. Of course, we are not suggesting that Trestman is capable of producing miracles with substandard talents and mercurcial personalities like Cade McNown and Ryan Leaf. But if a QB has a threshhold level of talent and mental acuity, he should be able to flourish in Trestman’s system.
So what does Trestman’s exceptional resume of burnishing quarterbacks have to do with Jay Cutler? Cutler, who will be 31 next season, is likely to demand a salary package in the range of Baltimore Ravens’ Super Bowl winning QB Joe Flacco’s six year, $121 deal. The average annual cap hit for Flacco’s deal is over $20 million, approximately 16% of the total 2013 salary cap, which is not expected to increase appreciably in the next few years. Flacco will be 33 in the final year of his deal. There is little precedent for a QB Cutler’s age receiving a deal this pricey without having guided his team to a Super Bowl.
Meanwhile, Indianapolis Colts’ QB Andrew Luck’s 2012 rookie contract is worth $22 million over four years, which carries an average annual cap figure of $5.5. McCown’s cap figure for the season is $865,000.
If the Bears were to sign Cutler, potentially an unrestricted free agent at season’s end, to a Flacco-like contract, they would be severely constricting their salary cap and jeopardizing their ability to sign some of the 25 players on their 53-man roster and Injured Reserve who are scheduled to become free agents along with Cutler. Moreover, with players able to reach free agency in the NFL after just four years of service, maintaining cap flexibility is critical both long and short term.
By 2016, Wide Receivers Alshon Jeffrey and Brandon Marshall, Offensive Guards Kyle Long and Matt Slausen, Running Back Matt Forte, Defensive Tackles Henry Melton and Nate Collins and Kicker Robbie Gould will all have the opportunity to become free agents, some as soon this offseason. Moreover, the Bears need to consider long term replacements for aging veterans Defensive End Julius Peppers (whose own 2014 cap figure could prove oppressive), Linebacker Lance Briggs, Cornerbacks Charles Tillman and Tim Jennings and Center Roberto Garza. The Bears are going to need salary cap space to retain key pieces that might not be possible if too much money is allocated to Cutler.
Thus, unless Cutler is willing to give the team a significant contractual discount, the Bears should entrust Trestman to work with a much-less expensive alternative like McCown while a QB acquired through the draft is groomed under Trestman like Michael Corleone was under his father. Maximum cap flexibility and Marc Trestman’s QB coaching wizardry could create a winning future for the Bears. A salary cap-busting contract for Cutler likely will not.