Count one-time Oakland Raiders quarterback and former pupil of Chicago Bears head coach Marc Trestman, Rich Gannon, among those who think the Bears would be better off without starting QB Jay Cutler right now.
Gannon, in an appearance on CBS Sports Network's "NFL Monday QB" advocated benching Cutler.
"It was embarrassing. This is a team that wasn't ready to play," Gannon said, according to Rich Campbell of The Chicago Tribune. "They lost the last four-out-of-five, and they're coming off of a bye. They came out last night and they were flat. Jay Cutler was awful. He turned it over three times - two interceptions and a fumble in the pocket. It bothered me that they weren't ready to play... If I were Marc Trestman, I'd sit Jay Cutler."
Trestman, Cutler and the entire Bears organization have come under fire after an exceedingly lackluster and ultimately abhorrent performance against the Green Bay Packers on Sunday in primetime in which they weren't even competitive, let alone ever in a position to win.
The Packers scored 35 unanswered points in the first half and the Bears, now 3-6 on the season, simply appeared to give up.
In a separate interview earlier in the day on "The Mully and Hanley Show" on WSCR-AM (670) in Chicago, Gannon was critical of both Cutler and Trestman, who he thinks is too worried about players quitting on him to be critical.
"I think you're right. I think he's worried about losing the locker room. I think he feels he's got a fragile football team right now, which is amazing. At some point, I always say, you have to hand the leadership of the football team back over to the players. I just don't know that that's happened. You look at a team like this, and you say, 'Well, how can they continue to lose the way they're losing?'... They're getting throttled. "
His criticism of Cutler was harsh, to say the least.
"And the quarterback, to me, as I watched him last night, he makes me sick to my stomach. His footwork is atrocious at times. You see him back there in the pocket, he's throwing off his back foot. He's all over the place. He's got happy feet. He doesn't set his feet. He's throwing off balance, and it's an accident waiting to happen. He's part of the problem - he's not the whole problem, but he's certainly part of it."
Gannon ultimately pointed the finger at both, and said the organization's lack of leadership is what's killing them.
"Everybody knows when you go up to Green Bay who is in charge. Yet, in Chicago, is it Cutler? Is it Trestman? Is it a linebacker? Is it Forte? I don't know who it is. That's the problem. They don't have that defined leader that they need in difficult times."
The Bears will get their next crack at righting the ship Sunday against the Minnesota Vikings, in a matchup up of the two worst teams in the NFC North.
