Draw a line through the Chicago Bears’ 2010 schedule — through the week of Oct. 31, when the Bears had a bye — and you’ve pretty much divided Chicago’s season into a first half that was not so good and a second half that was very good.
And the same could be said for Chicago quarte
rback Jay Cutler.
The Bears, who host Seattle in a Sunday playoff game, were 4-3 before their midseason break, but they lost three of the last four games in that stretch, including disappointing home defeats against the Seahawks and Washington.
After the break, though, Chicago was one of the league’s best teams, going 7-2. And one of those losses was the season finale at Green Bay, which was meaningless for the Bears in terms of the standings and playoff positions.
Cutler, meanwhile, opened the season with two good games in wins against Detroit and Dallas, but then went through a prolonged period of mediocrity. Over his next four outings (he missed one game with an injury) his quarterback rating never topped 82.5, and he threw just two touchdown passes and six interceptions.
Since then, and largely owing to a reshuffled and much improved offensive line, Cutler has been decidedly better. Four times in the season’s remaining games his quarterback rating was over 100 and he just missed (97.6) a fifth time while passing for 16 TDs with nine interceptions.
“(His) confidence is high,” Bears head coach Lovie Smith said by telephone on Wednesday. “Every quarterback in the playoffs right now has confidence in their game and … that’s definitely been the case with Jay.”
This is Cutler’s second season in Chicago, following a trade from the Denver Broncos after the 2008 NFL season, his third as a pro. He arrived “just wanting to be one of the guys,” Smith said, “but as the quarterback of the team you can’t necessarily just be one of the guys. We look to (the quarterback) to show leadership and make plays when we call on you, and that’s what Jay has done.
“He’s a great player. … He’s everything we’re looking for in a QB.”
For his part, Cutler might feel like he has a grudge to settle against the Seahawks. In the Oct. 17 game at Chicago’s Soldier Field, Seattle befuddled Cutler with a complex package of blitzes. He completed 17-of-39 passes for 290 yards, but threw no touchdowns and was sacked six times (a season high, equaled in the Jan. 2 game against Green Bay).
Also, the Bears were a hapless 0-for-12 on third down plays, which was a big reason the Seahawks came away with a 23-20 victory.
“They brought a lot of blitzes,” Cutler said, “and we had trouble picking them up, from safeties to linebackers to defensive linemen. … They just fooled us a lot with some of the safety blitzes, some of the nickel blitzes off the edge. It’s stuff that we’ve seen before and stuff that we’ve seen since, so we’ve just got to execute better.”
From studying films of the Seahawks, “they’re still doing some of the same stuff,” he went on. “(But) they’ve kind of toned down the blitz. So we don’t know exactly what their game plan is going to be on Sunday, but we’ve got to prepare for everything.”
The funny thing is, the Bears showed marked improvement in the second half of their season even as the Seahawks were slumping. While Chicago was winning seven of its last nine regular-season games, Seattle was losing seven of its last 10.
But if you ask Cutler, the 7-8 Seahawks are actually unbeaten heading into Sunday’s game.
“At this point they’re 1-0 in our minds,” he said. “They beat a very, very good (New Orleans) Saints team (in last Saturday’s playoff opener, 41-36) and they’re playing good football. They’re doing what it takes to win in the playoffs, so we’ve got a tough challenge ahead.”
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