The Sun Times’ new Bears beat reporter Sean Jensen took to the film room with ESPN’s Ron Jaworski to break down all 26 of Jay Cutler’s interceptions. They reach conclusions about pass protection not being to blame in the article but I’m not buying it. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not absolving Jay for the picks, but I think there’s plenty of blame to go around.
Reading Jaws’ commentary under each pick got annoying, especially when each play it seemed like he was piling on Cutler. OK, we get it. Bad mechanics. Bad decisions. Bad everything.
To spare you from reading the whole article and going through the tedium of the slide show, I did some old fashioned number-crunching of my own. So I took their analysis and got to crafting some fancy pie charts to see what really went on last season. Why? Why not? It’s the offseason and I’m bored. So check out my breakdown of their breakdown:
Green Bay leads the way with six of JC’s twenty-six picks, but they did it in two games. An impressive honorable mention to the Niners, who tallied five picks in a single game.
The talk much of the season was that Jay needed night vision goggles because he seemed to thrown more picks at night. How about a 50/50 split when all is said and done? That number is skewed a bit since he threw 9 picks in just two prime time dates. If nothing else, it seems like he threw picks in bunches under the bright lights.
One thing that is true is that Jay definitely likes the home cooking of Soldier Field way better than road games.
Cutler spread the ball around by quarter pretty fairly, but it bothers me that more than 50% of his picks were thrown in the first half.
Then again, Cutler tossed about 2/3 of his picks while the Bears were trailing. Think that’s someone who’s trying to carry his team and is forcing the ball?
Half of Cutler’s picks were thrown on 3rd and 4th down. The bad news – the other half were thrown on 1st and 2nd down. The INT’s on 1st down really bother me.
Here’s a breakdown of the interceptions by intended target. A couple of things to take away from this: as Johnny Knox gets more experience he will finish routes more consistently and passes intended for him getting picked off should go down. Same goes for Bennett. Let’s face it, he was essentially a rookie last year.
It also is worth noting that three intended Aromashodu passes were intercepted. Not a big deal except when you consider that he barely played until the end of the year.
One other stat that didn’t merit a pretty pie chart is that Cutler was intercepted by a defensive lineman four times. Four times. Ouch.
What will next season under new OC Mike Martz’s tutelage bring? Who knows, but it can’t get much worse than last season, can it?