Cutler Ignores McDaniels' Text Messages

Jay Cutler has put his Denver-area house on the market, asked the Broncos to trade him, and now he's ignoring reconciliation attempts from Josh McDaniels. Yep, that's right: text messages from rookie head coach to the mercurial quarterback have gone unanswered.

Ah, the vagaries of technology. Perhaps a Facebook friend request or a heartfelt Tweet are in order.

Despite the impasse, McDaniels insists that Cutler is the Broncos' quarterback, undoubtedly because those are the PR talking points 'til he's actually traded. (Or, at the very least, until Denver takes Matthew Stafford or Mark Sanchez in next month's draft.) Via NFL.com:

Scott Hanson: "You see [Cutler] as the quarterback of the Denver Broncos?

McDaniels: Yeah. He's our quarterback.

Hanson: Present tense.

McDaniels: He's our quarterback. Period (laughs).

Hanson: Future tense? He will be your quarterback?

McDaniels: He's our quarterback -- we can't predict the future, you know. He's our quarterback and, you know, we want him to be our quarterback. We made that very clear to him and, um, we hope he feels the same way.

McDaniels adds: "This is an issue that needs to be resolved between Jay and myself and not ... through the media ... This is a thing where we need to sit in the same room, and we need to talk, and we need to continue to talk till it's right." Again, that's the exact right thing to say.

And after a rocky start, McDaniels is winning in the court of public opinion, which seems unimaginable given that he's a first-year head coach with less than three months on the job, and butting heads with the young, franchise quarterback just off a Pro Bowl season. Yet here we are.

The Denver Post's Mike Klis suspects that the situation may become untenable should Cutler decide to skip out on the April 17-19 mandatory workouts. "If Cutler doesn't attend, the Broncos may step up efforts to acquiesce his trade request before the NFL Draft begins the following week."

Sure seems like a long way to go to prove a point.