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Jay Cutler's big breakthrough
KC Joyner
ESPN Insider | May 28, 2014
Jay Cutler
AP Photo/Matt Rourke
Marc Trestman has been a tremendous help to Jay Cutler in Chicago.
Chicago Bears head coach Marc Trestman had a number of notable offensive achievements in his first year at the helm of this team. Under his tutelage, the Bears set franchise records for net offensive yards (6,109), net passing yards (4,281), completion percentage (64.4), passing touchdowns (32) and first downs (344) and placed second in team history in points scored in a single season (445).
As impressive as those accomplishments were, the biggest feather in Trestman's Chicago coaching hat was how he helped Jay Cutler cure a career-long habit of being one of the worst decision-makers in the NFL. Two of the best offensive coaching minds in league history (Mike Shanahan and Mike Martz) were among many who had previously tried to solve this issue without success, but Trestman's simple yet incredibly effective approach worked wonders where others had failed.
This accomplishment is significant, because while it wasn't quite enough last season to vault the Bears into the postseason for the first time since 2010, a closer look at the situation indicates that Cutler is poised for a breakthrough campaign (provided he can stay healthy) in 2014. And not only will that make Chicago a playoff contender, but it gives this unit enough upside potential to challenge Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers for the honor of best passing attack in the NFC North.
A history of legendarily poor decision levels
Before getting into the specifics of what Trestman did to help correct this problem, it is worth taking a step back to see just how high a mountain he had to climb.
In his first seven pro seasons, Cutler wasn't merely below average in the bad decision rate (BDR) metric that gauges how often a passer makes a mental error that leads to a turnover opportunity for the opposing team. He was bottom-of-the-barrel caliber.
To illustrate, take a look below at Cutler's BDR rate and where it ranked each year.
2006 -- 5.8 percent BDR (this total would have ranked last had he racked up enough attempts to be listed as a qualifier)
2007 -- 5.0 percent (ranked last)
2008 -- 4.6 percent (tied for last)
2009 -- 3.4 percent (tied for 25th)
2010 -- 4.5 percent (next to last)
2011 -- 4.5 percent (next to last)
2012 -- 3.7 percent (37th out of 39 qualifying quarterbacks)
In every season sans one, Cutler had a BDR that placed among the bottom three in the league. He rarely even came close to reaching the 3 percent BDR bar that serves as the rough median for acceptable performance among quarterbacks in a vertically inclined passing offense (such as the ones he played in during this time frame). They are the kinds of numbers Brett Favre, the former world champion of bad decision-makers, might have been embarrassed to post.
That level of performance makes it clear just how incredible Cutler's 1.4 percent BDR (ranked tied for 18th) was last year. This total is less than half of any previous Cutler campaign and is an extraordinary figure considering how prolific this passing attack was last season.
The process for correcting these errors
The approach Trestman used looks in hindsight to be brilliantly simple. He spoke recently about how the playbook was narrowed to feature what Cutler liked to do most, but the metrics show that approach had a very significant side effect of eliminating the types of plays that Cutler doesn't fare well in.
Brandon Marshall and Alshon Jeffery
Mike McGinnis/Getty Images
Brandon Marshall (left) and Alshon Jeffery are a dynamic receiving duo.
Scramble plays
Cutler doesn't scramble much, and as such this wouldn't appear to be an area where an improvement would do much to impact the bottom line. But it didn't stop Trestman from seemingly incorporating a basic rule on scramble plays: Don't take any chances. If the receiver isn't wide open, throw the ball away.
This helped reduce the percentage of plays in which Cutler attempted a pass after a scramble from 25 in 2012 (5.5 percent of his total pass attempts) to 18 in 2013 (4.9 percent of his total throws), but more importantly it reduced his scramble BDR from 6.9 percent in 2012 to zero percent in 2013. The net result was an elimination of two bad decisions, which may not seem great in the overall scheme of things but served as a basic building block for getting Cutler's BDR under control.
Attacking zone defenses on downfield throws
Cutler has found it hard to control his urge to force passes into crowded coverage areas over the years.
In 2012, this led to four bad decisions in 47 attempts into tight coverage, or a ridiculously high 8.5 percent BDR. At that risk-taking level, there almost isn't a yards per attempt (YPA) production level high enough to make the risk worth the reward.
Trestman seemed to recognize that this limitation effectively removes one of the highest-impact aspects of any aerial attack. This caused him to put in only those vertically inclined, zone-defense passing plays where he could feel safe that Cutler's risk-reward payoff would end up being a net positive for the offense.
This mindset did cause a reduction in these types of throws (10.4 percent of pass attempts in 2012, 7.7 percent in 2013) but it also cut the BDR down by more than half to a very acceptable 3.6 percent level.
Not staring down receivers
Staring down receivers had long been an issue for Cutler, and it led to eight bad decisions in 2012, or 53 percent of his overall total in this category.
Under Trestman's tutelage, Cutler's reads were made easier, which took some of the coverage-reading pressure off of him. Once defenses saw this alteration was leading to Cutler getting rid of this bad habit, they stopped trying to bait him into mistakes and instead went about trying to call defenses that had other primary goals in mind. This combination of factors helped him drop his stare bad decision total to one in 2013, a mark that comprised only 16.7 percent of his overall BDR total.
It should also be noted that Alshon Jeffery started opposite Marshall in 2013, giving Cutler an additional legitimate WR to target, and Chicago's offensive-line play greatly improved last season (5.5 percent adjusted sack rate according to Football Outsiders in 2013, which ranked fifth; 8.0 in 2012, which was 24th).
What the future holds
As famed sabermetrician Bill James frequently noted, statistics are only good within context. In the case of Cutler and Chicago's passing attack, that context is the NFC North. This division can make a strong argument as having the most powerful set of aerial platoons in the NFL, so the Bears will likely need to take the divisional passing game lead in order to win their first division title since 2010.
They have the receiving corps to do this, as the tandem of Marshall and Jeffery are arguably a better 1-2 combination than Calvin Johnson and Golden Tate (Lions) or Jordy Nelson and Randall Cobb (Packers). Chicago also had the most prolific pass-catching tight end in the division (Martellus Bennett) as well as Matt Forte, whose 2,325 receiving yards since 2008 ranks third among running backs in that time frame.
The only skill-position area where the Bears could still fall behind is at quarterback, but Cutler's progression has been so great that may no longer be the case. His 1.4 percent BDR last season places him close enough to Rodgers (1.0 percent BDR in 2013) and Matthew Stafford (1.2 percent BDR) to consider this area a push, and his 7.4 YPA was nearly identical to Stafford's 7.3 YPA last year.
Cutler does need to remove a durability question mark, as he has missed 12 games over the past three seasons, and he needs to close the YPA gap with Rodgers (8.2 career YPA).
The good news here is there is room to grow, as indicated by the 8.0 YPA mark posted by Josh McCown, his injury replacement last season. McCown reached this YPA level with a higher BDR (2.1 percent), a fact that indicates he was probably given the green light to take more chances than Cutler. Now that Trestman knows he can put more trust in Cutler's decision-making, the odds are quite good that he will let Cutler take a similar volume of chances, knowing that even if his BDR moves up to McCown's level, his YPA production levels will do to the same.
That type of risk-reward trade-off would be the type of net positive this offense needs to assert passing game supremacy in the NFC North. And it could be enough for the Bears to ride a breakthrough campaign from Cutler to the postseason.
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