Mike Martz Calling Bears' Shots Would Mean Jay Cutler Takes Some Shots

The clown car parade has stopped for now after the biggest clown made it to Halas Hall and then apparently to Nashville.

The Chicago Sun-Times reports that after interviewing with Lovie Smith and Jerry Angelo, Mike Martz super genius went to try and talk to Bears quarterback Jay Cutler. Perhaps Martz is just trying to assure Cutler his offense can work in Chicago, or perhaps he even went to convince Cutler not to do something entirely unprecedented and completely ridiculous like, say, demand a trade.

In either case, now that Martz has been the only real...cough...qualified candidate to actually make it to Halas Hall for the Bears offensive coordinator job, it’s time to accept the inevitable.

Martz will be coordinator. It’s obvious Smith wanted his former boss in St. Louis as Bears coordinator from the start.

So here’s what to look forward to in 2010 with Martz coaching Cutler and the offense based on past results:

Martz took over the Rams offense for head coach Dick Vermeil in 1999 and immediately took them to the Lombardi Trophy with a record 526 points.

So the Bears can expect an immediate transformation of this type?

Of course, Martz did take over two other offenses in subsequent stints and the results were slightly less positive.

In his first year as Detroit offensive coordinator in 2006, the Lions were 22nd in yardage, 21st in scoring and seventh in passing. And they were also last in rushing, threw the fourth-most interceptions and gave up a whopping 63 sacks, second most in the NFL.

But Martz was just getting started.

For an encore, he got the Lions offense elevated to 16th in scoring and ninth in passing, but they still wound up next to last in rushing, threw the third-most interceptions (22) and had the third-most sacks allowed (54).

Martz wasn’t through, of course. He went to San Francisco for the 2008 season and the 49ers finished 13th in passing and 22nd in scoring. Oh, and they were also—doesn’t this part sound familiar—27th in rushing, fifth in interceptions thrown (19) and worst in sacks allowed (55).

The bottom line is while running Martz’s offense without a dominant left tackle and lacking a group of spectacular wide receivers, Cutler can look forward to having no running game, throwing a lot of interceptions and getting sacked a lot.

In other words, he can look forward to 2009 in 2010.

Martz’s offense has the quarterback throwing off seven-step drops, doesn’t run the ball and leaves very few options in short, hot-read routes for the quarterback when opponents start blitzing. For this reason, passers tend to get sacked and turn over the ball a lot.

There will be some benefit from all of this.

It will be entertaining to have the coach who says his team “gets off the bus running,” suddenly be forced to watch his own choice for offensive coordinator throwing the season down the toilet by calling 50 passes a contest.

There will also be a positive to it all, but that will have to wait until 2011.

That’s when a new coaching staff will take over the team.