Grossman Defends Cutler
As if a 5 interception night last Thursday wasn’t bad enough for Jay Cutler, now he’s getting an unlikely person coming to his defense – Dan Grossman. Yup, Rex Grossman’s dad jumped to the beleaguered quarterback’s defense. Here’s a snippet from Fred Mitchell’s piece:
"“What’s amazing to me is, here we go again with Jay Cutler,” Grossman said. “He came in and he was going to be the franchise quarterback and lead the Bears. I heard some people say they were going to the Super Bowl this year. There was a lot of Cutler-mania going on in the preseason and all that. And here we are, back in the situation where … because the team is not really built around a passing game, he has struggled. I don’t really blame it on Jay Cutler.”"
Here’s some more from Grossman, talking about the recent history of the quarterback position in Chicago:
"“Obviously, the last 20-something quarterbacks that have played in Chicago have not all been complete failures as quarterbacks,” Dan Grossman said. “They obviously played somewhere before Chicago in order to be on that team. And several of them played respectably well after leaving that team. To me, there’s an inherent organizational problem with the quarterback position.”"
Were has this astute football mind been hiding? In his ophthalmology practice in Bloomington, IN of course. He goes on to rip the Bears philosophy and how they built their team:
"“Running is obviously a very important part of the offense. But the best teams in this league are prolific passing teams. And they have been for years. You can’t name me a really great team in the last 10-20 years that hasn’t had a passing component that was a very important part of it. And for a team to be effective at passing, you have to build your offense around your quarterback. You have to commit to the quarterback: ‘You’re our guy.’ And then you have to build the offense around the quarterback. Not the other way around. You don’t bring your quarterback in and say: ‘We’re going to get off the bus running. But on third-and-10, you’ve got to come through for us now!’“The successful teams have brought in a quarterback, have surrounded him with excellent linemen, receivers and running backs. Once that quarterback becomes quite confident and comfortable with the system — depending on their skill level — they can flourish.”"
Jealous much? How about bitter? Sounds a lot like sour grapes to me. It’s tough to argue with what he says, but is he the right guy to be delivering the message?
Tomorrow, Kyle Orton’s second cousin analyzes what’s wrong with the Bears running game and Wednesday Brian Urlacher’s baby mama critiques the Cover-2.