Back in April of '09, Cutler & Orton were in a deal.
With the draft picks being made, the deal ended up being:
Jay Cutler to the Bears
Kyle Orton, Robert Ayers & Richard Quinn (via draft pick trade with Steelers).
Here are some notes about Ayers: http://www.denverpost.com/broncos/ci_17009731
Richard Quinn has 1 catch in 2 years.
Kyle Orton has been benched, in favor of a QB that nobody (but me, for some reason) has any faith in.
The Bears are 11-5, and have the #2 seed in the playoffs.
I wrote a blog post at the time of the trade, basically it was short and sweet, you can see it here.
I am writing this purely to say I was right.
5 comments:
I don't really think this is fair. Tebow has his detractors, but a LOT of people have faith in him, including the team.
You're kind of getting into an area that I think you usually hate...giving the QB all the credit for wins and the blame for losses.
Cutler has Matt Forte and an incredible defense, while Orton had his top RB miss a lot of time and one of the worst defenses in the leauge. And what happened? Orton put up superior numbers to Cutler, in just 13 games compared to Cutler's 16.
The Broncos offense vastly outperformed the Bears offense and it's not like Tebow willed the Broncos to win games that Orton couldn't have.
I'm very interested to see what happens with Orton next year. If he ends up on a team that actually is decent and is just missing a QB (Tennessee?), I think he'll do just fine.
Eh, correction. Cutler played 15 games.
I think I'm more hammering Dilfer than Orton - or giving credit to Cutler. To say the Bears are winning b/c of Cutler, and only b/c of him, is flat out dumb. Jay is a weird, weird, QB.
The thing I hated back then was the notion that Orton is a "system QB", and that Cutler isn't. Well, I hate the idea of calling someone a "system QB", b/c what the hell does that mean.
Point is, I'd rather have Cutler on my team any day of the week over Orton, and I think their careers will bear that out.
Of course Brady deserves all the credit in New England, amiright?
I have to agree with Justin on this one. Despite the team performances, Orton has been a better QB than Cutler both seasons since the trade (definitely statistically, and from the few games I've seen them play, nothing showed me the statistics were lying) .
Additionally, it's pretty unfair to judge draft pick trades (with the possible exception of draft day trades) based on the results of the pick. You can't seriously argue 2 first round picks plus a 3rd had no value when the trade was made just because the resulting picks didn't pan out.
If you want to play that game though, you have a huge omission of the 2010 1st round pick involved in the Cutler trade (traded a few times, but eventually resulted in Denver drafting Tebow and picking up some other later picks). And while we're at it, you should mention the 3rd round pick turned into Mike Wallace (traded to Pitt from Denver).
I agree with you that the "system quarterback" label is stupid and Dilfer only likes to give it out because he thinks it somehow validates his career.
Orton has played in two vastly different systems and has been decent in one and statistically great in the other. He might not ever have as high a peak as Cutler might have, but I have a feeling Cutler's career will crash and burn whereas Orton's will be longer and more steady.
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