Cutler Not Cutting It for Chicago

CHICAGO -- The game has been over for less than an hour, and I'm staring at Soldier Field, trying to figure out what Bears coach Lovie Smith was just talking about and how on earth he can still be the coach.

The Bears beat the Rams 17-9 Sunday in one of the most boring games you've ever seen. The Bears did nothing. The Rams did less.

The game mattered because it was the final touches on Bears quarterback Jay Cutler's embarrassing season. The Bears are now dressing him up completely out of character, like a 4-year old girl dresses up a new Labrador with a bonnet.

The Bears have given up on Cutler, and want Kyle Orton back. The old Orton, who didn't do anything for the Bears for the previous few years.

On Sunday, the Bears completed the work of turning Cutler into Orton, which is fitting because the players switched teams, and Orton has become Cutler in Denver.

Cutler came to Chicago to be the Bears' Brett Favre, or any other tough quarterback who can play the game in color instead of black-and-white.

He was going to play aggressively, pass boldly. With the Bears, Orton was great at handing off, dumping passes and throwing interceptions when modern quarterbacking was needed.

On Sunday, Cutler threw for 135 yards in the first quarter, and the Bears went up 10-0. After that, he threw for 8 yards.

Total.

You think of star quarterbacks and 300-yard games. In the final three quarters, Cutler, who was in the Pro Bowl 10 months ago, threw for 288 inches.

And the Bears finally won. And the transformation was complete. The Bears have kissed this prince and turned him into a frog.

"The weather was changing to Chicago Bear weather,'' Bears coach Lovie Smith said. "We felt that we needed to run the football and we could run the football.''

One thing: I'm looking at the orange flags on top of the goalpost in the South endzone after hearing Smith explain. The flags are not moving. They are just hanging there.

Bear Weather means something special here. This isn't it.

Bitter air blows off the lake through your bones. Chicagoans tough it out as a badge of citizenship. They want their football team to do that, too.

Is it snowing? No.

Sleeting? No.

Raining? No.

Just guessing, but the temperature is 30. To Chicagoans, that's not Bear Weather.

It's gardening weather.

The Bears did not turn Jay Cutler into Kyle Orton because of Bear Weather.

"I dinged my hand a little bit in the first half,'' Cutler said, trying excuse No. 2.

Really? How, when?

"I just dinged it a little bit. I'll be fine.''

Jay Cutler, gunslinging quarterback, couldn't pass because of a dinged finger.

"We had three straight series where we started inside the 7,'' Bears offensive coordinator Ron Turner said. "We didn't want to make mistakes. Situations dictated.''

Weather. Finger. Situations. The truth is, 11 games and one quarter into life with a new toy, the Bears have thrown it into the back of the closet.

Cutler has been awful, having thrown 20 interceptions. He's no longer brash. He has no confidence. He forces things that aren't there.

The Bears have waited half a century to find a real quarterback, and now that they have one, the franchise has fallen apart.

Smith has always said that the Bears are a running team. That's his mentality. Now, they have a franchise-changing passer.

Instead, the franchise has changed Cutler.

Smith can't adjust. Meanwhile, six seasons with his system, and the Bears can't run either. He just keeps changing assistants, blaming others.

Time for him to go away.

General manager Jerry Angelo made the big trade for a quarterback but has continued his perfect string of nine years without a receiver.

Exactly how hard is it to find one? The Bears also don't have an offensive line.

Time for Angelo to go.

And what about Turner? Cutler was at his best moving out of the pocket in Denver, finding someone to rifle passes to. Yet he rarely leaves the pocket in Turner's offense.

"It's something we've talked about trying to implement a little bit more, yeah,'' Turner said.

Too late. Turner needs to go.

The feeling is that the Bears owe Angelo and Smith too much money and are too cheap to fire them now. So Turner will get all the blame.

Who knew how uncomfortable it would be to have a quarterback? And how easy it would be to ruin one.

"Jay did what we asked him to do,'' Smith said, proudly acknowledging that Cutler didn't throw interceptions Sunday.
Smith used to say that about Orton after every win.

Linebacker Brian Urlacher complained to Yahoo! Sports last week about the Bears' identity under Cutler: "We used to establish the run and wear teams down and try not to make mistakes. And we'd rely on our defense to keep us in the game and make big plays and to put us in position to win.

"Kyle Orton might not be the flashiest quarterback, but the guy is a winner, and that formula worked for us."

It did not work. The Bears have won two postseason games in Urlacher's 10 years. But his quote feels right to Chicagoans.

Cutler said the criticism is fair. And the Bears were so scared of him Sunday that they didn't let him pass in gardening weather, sitting on a 10-point lead for three quarters while the worst team in football nearly tied the game in the final seconds.

The Bears have ruined a star quarterback, dressing him up into the old, familiar failure they're comfortable with.

Cutler looks terrible in a bonnet.

Email me at gregcouch09@aol.com