Boy, this Jay Cutler, with a 58-inch chest, 22-inch arms, an eminent Las Vegas bodybuilder and frequent Mr. Olympia finalist who …
Oops.
Wrong Jay Cutler.
Oh, that Jay Cutler. From Vanderbilt. Won 11 measly games there in four years. Big arm. Big dreams.
The highest NFL draft pick (No. 11) Mike Shanahan has made in 12 Broncos drafts. And Shanahan traded up four spots from No. 15 to swipe Cutler on Saturday.
This tells you three things:
1) Cutler is a very smart man. You play quarterback at a tough academic school like Vanderbilt, you have an extraordinary brain. Little excites Shanahan more in a football player than his intelligence. There is no room that Shana han walks into where he does not believe he is one of the smartest guys around. He wants his quarterback to be the same. Cutler fits the standard.
2) Jake Plummer is on the clock. Always has been. But the Broncos just sped up the dials. Flipped the hourglass and set it for likely one final Plummer season. The sand is plunging.
3) Bradlee Van Pelt is not the answer as the Broncos’ future starting quarterback.
Cutler is.
A bold move like this one, investing this much at this position at this time, makes it clear the Broncos see Cutler as I do, Brett Favre-like, a stronger version of Jeff Garcia, nimble with a gun for an arm and a toughness – mental and physical – that the Broncos believe they do not have at quarterback. Ask enough Broncos and they say Cutler’s game reminds them of an old friend who wore No. 7.
Cutler plays quarterback with his head up and his eyes downfield. He is a passer who finds open receivers by often using his second and third route options.
He is the lone quarterback of the draft’s top three who performed at the scouting combine. Get this – he lifted weights for scouts. Top quarterbacks nowadays do not work at the combine. Few quarterbacks at the combine do the lifting. Cutler ripped 225 pounds 23 times. That was better than some linemen.
He played at pitiful Vanderbilt. Are you alarmed that this quarterback, though voted the Southeastern Conference offensive player of the year, did not have a single winning collegiate season? Does it bother you that Vanderbilt has produced only seven first-round picks in the past 69 years?
Here is how a personnel chief in the Broncos’ division answered that: “We watched the tape. This guy had six or seven drops by his receivers every game. He had his team in position to win several games that they lost. He got hammered because of poor pass protection. It was him and little else there. You have to look beyond that. He’s genuine.”
There were six first-round trades on draft day. The Broncos were the first to leap. Notice that no team moved into the top 10 picks. The juggling started at No. 11 with the Broncos, and their hope is that they landed a franchise quarterback at a midlevel first-round price. This is smart shopping. Especially if it works.
Does Plummer enter this season thinking he is one-and- done?
It looks that way. The dollars say so. He signed a seven-year, $40 million contract in 2003, restructured it when the Broncos asked and recently received a $2 million signing bonus. But after the 2006 season, Plummer has this amount left in his contract in guaranteed money:
Zero.
Can you say split?
The Broncos always have believed they had to push Plummer, keep a finger on him, press him to get his best work. Now they have presented him with something that works better with athletes than pleading or nudging or threats: competition. A guy in Cutler who can make every throw every which way, who can zing the outs and the ins receivers run. Who can wing it deep. The consensus is this is the strongest arm in the draft. The way the Broncos’ passing game is designed, bullet passes make a significant difference.
We know that everything the Broncos touch in the draft (Maurice Clarett) does not work.
In the 2002 draft, the Broncos at No. 19 selected receiver Ashley Lelie.
With the next pick, Green Bay chose receiver Javon Walker.
On Saturday, the Broncos traded for Walker.
Better to get that draft right four years later than never, and they just might have struck gold at quarterback. Seldom does that happen without risks.
There was another quarterback who slipped to the No. 11 spot, this one in the 2004 draft. More popular names – Eli Manning and Phillip Rivers – went before this quarterback, just like Vince Young and Matt Leinart on Saturday. Ben Roethlisberger settled for the No. 11 position with Pittsburgh in ’04. He just won Super Bowl XL.
Jay Cutler looks a cut above.
Even minus the dumbbells.
Staff writer Thomas Georgecan be reached at 303-820-1994 or tgeorge@denverpost.com.
