thunderspirit
KFFL expatriate
Cutler deserves criticism for his lousy performances this season.Well, whether Cutler was "the reason" is clearly a matter of opinion. In a way either of these could have been considered Cutler's "fault", but assigning blame is a somewhat subjective matter in those cases. It is certainly not as cut and dry as you are trying to put it.
There's no question that McDaniels' team suffered greatly when Cutler forced his way out of Denver, particularly on offense. And Cutler did that because of a personal problem with McDaniels - this isn't a matter of debate, it's fairly well known. Whether all of the offensive malaise Denver suffered those two years while they retooled is Cutler's "fault" is of course debatable, but at the minimum it was a factor.
Lovie Smith...again, it's tricky. Lovie is gone almost purely because of the failure to execute offense under his tenure. Assigning blame there between Cutler and his coordinators and Angelo (who, let's not forget, was responsible for the abysmal offensive drafts) is not easy. If I were trying to do it, I would say something more like "he was only part of the reasons Smith was fired" rather than "NOT the reason."
Trestman...well, here again, I don't know. Was this team's offensive problem Trestman or Cutler's fault? I don't really know....I definitely blame both. Trestman clearly went away from the run at mysterious times in games (see for example Green Bay game 1), and too frequently did not seem to have game planned to an opponent's specific weakness (e.g. the Carolina D line's right, Green Bay's middle, the small New England safeties, etc). That being said, Trestman's schemes usually generated open receivers that Cutler frequently did not throw to. We still don't know who did what on run audibles, but that's probably at least partly on Cutler. And the O line had terrible problems properly calling correct blocking on passing plays...this was a major problem. That's definitely partly on Garza (why the fuck did we resign him again?) but also partly Cutler's responsibility....in-game at-snap calls really aren't Trestman's job.
So I don't know Joey...you can try to wash Cutler's hands in those three firings, but I don't really buy that. Now, no way he was the sole reason for any of them, but it's hard to not notice what role he did play.
These kinds of things can be overlooked with some playoff success, but there isn't any to do that with.
At the same time, here's a list of guys who were OCs for Cutler with the Bears who went on to be successful NFL OCs elsewhere afterward:
R̶o̶n̶ ̶T̶u̶r̶n̶e̶r̶
M̶i̶k̶e̶ ̶M̶a̶r̶t̶z̶
M̶i̶k̶e̶ ̶T̶i̶c̶e̶