Bears quarterback Jay Cutler doesn’t seem to get excited by pretty much anything. But he says that he’s excited by the team’s search for a new coach.
Via the Chicago Tribune, Cutler addressed the situation during his weekly radio show on ESPN 1000.
“I am generally excited,” Cutler said. “I have a lot of confidence in [G.M.] Phil Emery and everyone down there.”
Cutler also addressed the question of whether he’d spend time with any of the candidates to replace Lovie Smith.
“If Phil asked me, I would,” Cutler said. “But I am not going to petition for it. The last day at Halas up in the hallway, [Emery] just said he was going to bring in the best guy. I am more than confident in Phil being able to do this. He is not going to hire anybody who doesn’t get along with anyone on the team.”
It’s surprisingly optimistic, and it’s also more than a bit unrealistic. Every G.M. wants to hire his own coach, and every coach wants to find his own quarterback. Cutler knows this well, because it happened to him four years ago, when Josh McDaniels became the new coach of the Broncos.
Indeed, Cutler realizes there’s a chance that he’ll be the odd man out, again. Asked whether he’s confident he’ll be part of the team’s future once a new coach is hired, Cutler said, “I don’t know, you just don’t know.”
And we won’t know until a new coach is hired, and until the new coach has had an opportunity to get settled in and to implement whatever plan he has.
Maybe Cutler is actually excited because he knows there’s a chance that, when his contract expires after the coming season, he’ll get a chance to hit the open market and go to a team with a coach that wants him.