I thought the following quote from the Chicago Tribune was significant in terms of quarterback Jay Cutler‘s growth within the new offense:
“On if Brandon Marshall was the primary target on the touchdown pass:
“’We kind of went across the field there. We wanted to get Martellus [Bennett] down the middle again, but they covered that up. We had kind of had a check down to Alshon [Jeffrey] in the left flat and they
covered that up. He was kind of the third late read there. It was just a click late, but he still made a great catch.’”
My fear has been (and still is) that when Cutler is under pressure in the pocket, he’s going to simply throw the ball up for Brandon Marshall, the only receiver he really trusted last year. This play initially did nothing to alleviate that fear. What I think is significant is that Cutler didn’t do what I thought he did. He went through his progression in the face of a blitz and found Marshall as the third read.
I won’t say that I’m completely convinced that Cutler isn’t going to devolve into what we saw last year when he’s trapped in the pocket under pressure and things generally aren’t going well. Not yet. But this seems to me to be significant progress and I’ve got a lot more hope today than I had Saturday.