The Cutler Conundrum

For anyone who even casually follows sports, you have by now no doubt heard about the drama going on between the Denver Broncos and their QB Jay Cutler. To summarize the situation for those of you who may not have heard, the Broncos' new head coach Josh McDaniels, a former assistant under Bill Belichick in New England, attempted to make a play for former Patriots' QB Matt Cassel using Cutler as trade bait. Cutler, who despite a losing record as a starter (mostly due to the Broncos' GHASTLY defense), is generally regarded as one of the elite young QB's in the NFL, took exception to this attempt to trade him away and has been publicly bashing his team's management since.

It all came to a head yesterday (ironically on April Fool's Day) when the Broncos formally announced that they were seeking to trade Cutler and that the price was two first-round draft picks. A steep price, to be sure, but in this age of overpriced rookie busts, it seems fairly reasonable for a franchise-type quarterback that has already proven his Pro Bowl ability. Teams rumored to be in the mix for Cutler are the Redksins (of course), Jets, Panthers, Bears, Lions and Buccaneers. Actually, you could probably throw just about every team in the NFL (except for maybe the Colts and Patriots) into the mix - Cutler is that good.

Now, Cutler has thrown another monkey wrench into the process. At last night's UFC event in Nashville, he told an ESPN reporter that he was surprised about yesterday's announcement from the Broncos and that he never really wanted to be traded. What?! He was quoted, on the record, as telling ESPN's Chris Mortensen on March 16th that he was going to instruct his agent to formally request a trade out of Denver. Now he suddenly "likes his teammates, wants to stay in Denver and is surprised by the announcement." I'm beginning to think that Jay Cutler may not be a spoiled crybaby like I originally thought....he might just be nuts!!

Now, having said that, I am going to take a position on this that might prove unpopular, but as a fan of the game and someone who understands just how vital a Pro Bowl quarterback is to a team's success, I'm still going to lay the blame for this mess at the feet of the Broncos' management. Though Cutler is suddenly becoming the league's biggest diva this side of T.O., the team's owner and coach are the ones who set the wheels in motion for this....DUMPSTER FIRE, and I think that trading Cutler away is something that will haunt this franchise for years, possibly DECADES to come.

The Broncos' first mistake is pretty obvious to me, and that was firing head coach Mike Shanahan at the end of last season. A Super Bowl winner and a coach who is generally regarded around the NFL as an offensive genius, Shanahan was extremely close to Cutler and knew how to push the right buttons to get the best out of his young quarterback. However, after last year's late-season collapse, caused mostly by their horrendous defense, some bad officiating and a lot of bad luck, owner Pat Bowlen needed a fall guy, and that was Shanahan. At that time, Cutler expressed shock and disappointment and gave us the first signs of the impending meltdown, but nobody paid much attention to it at the time.

The Broncos' second mistake was hiring 32-year-old Josh McDaniels, formerly the Patriots' offensive coordinator, to replace Shanahan. History has proven that, while Bill Belichick may be a great head coach, his assistants - Charlie Weis, Romeo Crennell, Eric Mangini - have not had much success, not to mention McDaniels' young age and lack of experience as an assistant. This was just a bad hire, and I'm still not sure exactly what Pat Bowlen was thinking. However, the fact that the Patriots were able to go 11-5 with a backup QB (Cassel) that had not started a game since high school caused McDaniels' stock to soar, and Bowlen bought into it. Huge mistake, in my opinion.

Third mistake: trying to trade for Matt Cassel. This is on McDaniels. You walk into your first-ever head coaching job with all of the pieces in place to have a brilliant offense - except for a true starter at running back - and immediately try and make a deal for Cassel? I don't get this at all. I understand McDaniels' familiarity and comfort level with Cassel, but I just don't understand the logic behind trading away a legitimate starter for someone who may turn out to be a one-year wonder when taken away from the talented Patriots. And the worst thing about it was that the Broncos didn't tell Cutler what they were up to, and reportedly lied to him when he initially confronted them about it. This is not how men treat each other. They should have told Cutler what they were doing from the get-go and they should never have lied about it. I don't blame Cutler at all for being angry about it.

The biggest mistake the Broncos made, however, was handling the fallout. A lot of people would probably disagree with me on this, but I really think they should have fallen all over themselves and gone out of their way to make him feel wanted; they didn't. I understand that Cutler is acting childish and coming off as a spoiled brat...I get that. But sometimes, you have to make exceptions for exceptional talent. Its a brutal fact of life that not everyone is gets treated the same. Whether it is in the business world, politics, entertainment or sports, the best and the brightest usually get special treatment, because most of the people in charge realize that if you want to keep the top-level talent, you have to be willing to make reasonable concessions to them on occasion in order to stroke their massive egos. The Broncos refused to accept this reality, and now it is going to bite them. All they had to do was reach out and put an assuring arm around Cutler, apologize to him and let him know that he was their guy, and they failed to do that. Instead, McDaniels took the gruff, Belichick-esque tough-guy stance and say that he had no intention of trading Cutler, and that expected him to be their QB this year. By the time he got around to offering any type of regret or reassurance - which came off as grudgingly - the relationship was too far gone.

Now we are left with this mess. If I'm a Broncos fan, I'm wondering what the hell just happened. Five months ago, we're three games ahead of the Chargers in the AFC West, we have Mike Shanahan on the sideline and Jay Cutler under center; all we need are some missing pieces on the defense and the future looks bright. Then the collapse, the firing of Shanahan and the impending trade of Cutler, and this suddenly looks like a 3-13 team. This should never have happened. The people in Denver are some of the league's best fans and they deserve better. And when the Broncos struggle mightily just to compete in the woeful West for the next 10 years, the fans will have only Pat Bowlen and Josh McDaniels to blame.