Throughout his career, Jay Cutler has been a very up and down QB. 2014 was no different, as the Chicago Bears’ signal caller had some great moments but also his fair share of mistakes, and the Bears floundered to a 5-11 record. This article will break down the TDs that Cutler contributed to for the Bears in 2014.
Over my next few articles, I’m going to be covering the biggest positives (touchdowns) and negatives (turnovers) from the NFC North QBs in 2014. This article covers Jay Cutler his 28 passing and 2 rushing TDs in 2014. First, I’m going to cover some charting data I came up with while watching his passing. Then, on page 2 and beyond, there are my thoughts of the individual plays themselves. Here are the articles in the series that I have completed so far:
Here’s data on the yardage from Cutler’s TDs:
Yardage Breakdown
| Yards | 373 | Average | 13.3 |
| Yards after catch | 99 | Average | 3.5 |
| Yards in Air | 274 | Average | 9.8 |
| Yards in Air+ | 330 | Average | 11.8 |
The difference between “Yards in Air” and “Yards in Air+” is that I give credit for yards in the endzone in “Yards in Air+.” So, if the line of scrimmage is the 2 and he throws a TD pass that’s caught 7 yards into the endzone, the YIA for that play is 2 while the YIA+ is 9.
While 13.3 yards/completion looks impressive, when comparing that to the average yardage of other TD throwers it comes up well short. Bridgewater, Stafford, and Rodgers (who will be in my next article) all averaged over 20 yards/completion on their TD passes. Now, clearly, gross yardage isn’t everything, but at the very least that Cutler is throwing shorter TD passes than those other guys. A TD is a TD, so that’s not necessarily a bad thing because the team had to drive all that distance down the field to score. Something that jumps out to me is just how little help he’s getting after the catch. In fact, 20 of his 28 TD passes included no yardage after the catch. He did throw a few on screens as you’ll see later, but those plays were the exception. Cutler’s YIA+ is, on average, a full 2 yards higher than his YIA, so it’s clear that when he’s throwing TD passes, it’s likely because he’s targeting a player in the end zone, not that the player is gaining a massive amount of yardage after the catch.
This brings me to the next tables, which break his TD passes down by distance and location:
Distance Breakdown
| Fewer than 6 Yards | 7 |
| Between 6 and 15 yards | 13 |
| More than 15 yards | 8 |
Location Breakdown
| Deep Left | Deep Middle | Deep Right |
| 5 | 1 | 3 |
| Intermediate Left | Intermediate Middle | Intermediate Right |
| 3 | 3 | 3 |
| Short Left | Short Middle | Short Right |
| 5 | 3 | 2 |
Note that I evaluate the two categories differently. The first one is based on box score yardage, and the second is based on where the route was actually run. So, for example, Alshon Jeffery scored a 25 yard TD against the Panthers on a screen pass. That got put in the 16+ category on the distance breakdown and the Short Left category on the location breakdown. Here, you can see that Cutler actually spread his TD throws very well to all parts of the field. He seemed to slightly favor the left side of the field, but with a relatively small sample size there’s not a huge discrepancy in which areas he’s targeting.
Now let’s take a look at the route types he threw to:
Route Breakdown
| Vertical | 10 |
| Flat/Screen | 5 |
| Curl | 5 |
| Fade | 3 |
| Crossing | 3 |
| Broken Play | 1 |
| Out | 1 |
The most popular route on TDs seems like it’s always going to be the vertical route. When a receiver beats a DB deep, the play has a good chance of resulting in a TD. Marc Trestman also loves the screen game, so it’s not a huge surprise to me to see screens up there. With two big receivers, fades also played a large role, as well as curl routes on the goal line where Marshall, Jeffery, and Bennett were able to use their big bodies to get favorable position and win the ball.
However, there’s a lack of variety on this list. You don’t see any routes where the receiver runs diagonally, like a slant, post, or corner (well, some crossing routes can be diagonal routes). The lack of those plays indicates a lack of offensive variety from the Bears to me.
Speaking of rollouts, I also tracked plays where Cutler was pressured or didn’t have a standard dropback:
Dropback Breakdown
| Nothing Unusual | 24 |
| Rollout | 0 |
| Pressured | 4 |
Cutler didn’t roll out on any of these plays, which is a surprise to me because one of the most successful goal line plays is where the QB rolls out and has two receivers running a levels concept to stretch the defense vertically. Normally one of those guys comes open. He also didn’t face pressure a lot when throwing these TDs.
Speaking of pressure, how did Cutler do in close moments? Here’s a look at his TD’s in “Crunch Time” (which I define as the game being within 8 points in either direction with less than 5 minutes left in the game) and “Garbage Time” (down 9 points or more with under two minutes left, 16 points or more with under 6 minutes left, or 21 points or in the 4th Quarter) TDs:
Situational Breakdown
| Crunch Time | 0 |
| Garbage Time | 3 |
Cutler actively did not come through in the clutch despite opportunities. Three garbage time TDs is just over a tenth of his total TD output so they didn’t have a huge effect either.
With this talk of crunch time and garbage time TDs, let’s look at his TD breakdown by Quarter:
Quarter Breakdown
| 1st Quarter | 6 |
| 2nd Quarter | 8 |
| 3rd Quarter | 6 |
| 4th Quarter | 8 |
Down Breakdown
| 1st Down | 8 |
| 2nd Down | 10 |
| 3rd Down | 10 |
| 4th Down | 0 |
I honestly can’t find any trends here. He spread his TDs out very evenly.
Receiver Breakdown
| Alshon Jeffery | 9 |
| Brandon Marshall | 8 |
| Martellus Bennett | 6 |
| Matt Forte | 3 |
| Marquess Wilson | 1 |
| Josh Morgan | 1 |
Lack of variety is something that I think really plagued the Bears in 2014. As you can see here, only two players outside of his top four targets (Jeffery, Marshall, Bennett and Forte, who are all very good receiving threats) caught TD passes. When you don’t have any other options, it’s possible for teams to lock on your best players and take them out of the game. Now, it’s possible to succeed with four options, and Jeffery, Marshall, Bennett, and Forte might have been the most talented group in the league last year, but Cutler (and his OC) needs to do work to find other targets because what they did last year clearly didn’t work as planned.
