Jay Cutler has some advice for his old team: Take good care of my replacement.
Cutler, the former Bears quarterback who announced his retirement on Friday, says first-round draft pick Mitchell Trubisky should be brought along slowly, and Mike Glennon should keep the starting job until the Bears are sure both that Trubisky is ready and that the offensive line is ready to protect him.
“If it’s going downhill, I don’t really see any reason to play the kid,” Cutler told ESPN Radio. “I’m sure there’s going to be a lot of people calling for his name, because you draft him at No. 2 and draft him for a reason, and that’s to play football and win games. But if you look at a lot of quarterbacks throughout this league, until you’ve got some people around you, some pieces around you, it’s hard to win football games in this league as a quarterback. If it’s going downhill, there’s no way I’m playing him. For what? So he can go out there and take a beating and he can get off to a rough start as an NFL quarterback?”
Cutler was a first-round draft pick of the Broncos in 2006, and he first played in December of his rookie year, after veteran starter Jake Plummer was benched. Cutler thinks Trubisky may need to wait even longer than that.