Bears quarterback Jay Cutler had a much better game in Sunday’s win over the Rams than he had in last week’s loss to the Packers, but he acknowledges that the offense still has to get better.
After the Bears got just one offensive touchdown in a 23-6 win, Cutler said on ESPN 1000 in Chicago that he’d like to see the team get more explosive in new coordinator Mike Tice’s offense.
“We’re just not there yet to get style points,” Cutler said. “We’re just still trying to get regular points. We’ll get style points later. Right now we’re just learning the offense, everyone is getting comfortable, we’re finding our identity. Mike [Tice is] still finding his identity as a play caller. All those things are coming together, and at the end of the day we just have to win games. And that’s what we did. We wanted to play NFL-style football. We wanted to play an NFL game. We wanted to get it to third-and-manageable. If we didn’t get it, we wanted to punt. We weren’t going to try to go for home runs a lot. We wanted to run the ball, get some screens going and just play a normal NFL game.”
Cutler also said the Bears will continue to focus their passing game on getting the ball into the hands of Brandon Marshall. Cutler threw 11 passes to Marshall on Sunday, of which five were caught, for 71 yards.
“He’s our go-to receiver,” Cutler said. “He’s a guy we’re going to try to get to. Plays are designed for him. Plays are designed to get the ball in his area and let him make plays. I don’t think we made errors in doing that. It’s just sometimes they take it away and we have to go elsewhere.”
With Marshall becoming the Bears’ go-to receiver, Devin Hester has been largely phased out of the offense. Hester has just two catches for 27 yards this season, and he had a drop against the Rams. Cutler said Hester should have made the catch.
“Devin has to make that catch,” Cutler said. “I could have helped him out and put it a little bit lower for him, but Devin was as disappointed . . . probably more than anybody else. He wants to make those catches. It’s on both of us. It takes a lot of people to make that happen, and I have to help him out.”
The Bears’ defense is good enough that they’re going to be a tough team to beat as long as the offense doesn’t lose games for them, as it did in the loss to the Packers. But eventually, the Bears are going to need to stop saying they’re still learning the offense, and start actually getting some production out of their offense.