The Jay Cutler Effect: How a Trade Could Impact the Broncos and Other Teams

Unless you are an NFL fan who has been out of the country the last few weeks, you have heard about the drama surrounding the Broncos’ new coach, Josh McDaniels, and star quarterback, Jay Cutler. 

While PossessionPoints.com does not want to participate in rumor mongering, we want to address the impact that the addition of Cutler would have on a few of the NFL teams supposedly clamoring for a shot at the Pro Bowl player.

One of the most popular rumored destinations for Cutler is the New York Jets.  With the final (dare we say it?) retirement of Brett Favre, the Jets find themselves in need of a strong-armed quarterback.

Looking at the PossessionPoints offensive data for the Jets for 2008, you will see that the Jets’ offensive performance mirrored Favre’s arm health.  As Favre’s arm problems grew, the team’s fortunes fell. 

Before Favre threw his first pass for the Jets, PossessionPoints conjectured that a Jets offense with Favre might improve significantly with his addition.

We upped our forecast for the Jets for the 2008 season to 9-7, which is exactly how they finished. 

It is true that the loss of Favre leaves a gaping hole that the Jets have yet to fill. Could the addition of Cutler to the Jets have just as much of a dramatic effect as Favre's acquisition did? 

We absolutely believe that Cutler’s addition would not only meet the Favre yardstick, but would exceed it as well.

The problem with the Jets’ scenario is this: They have nothing to offer the Broncos that would make up for the loss of Cutler. 

Another team we hear in the mix is the Cleveland Browns. To us, this is an interesting scenario as the Browns have two quarterbacks that could potentially be stars in their own right.

However, they lack the credentials of a Cutler. You can tell by looking at the Browns’ offensive production from last year.  The gross amount of red in the chart below indicates that their offense was woeful at best last season as they failed to score more than 10 points in nine of their regular season games.

In the PossessionPoints.com view, a trade for either Anderson or Quinn would result in an improvement for the Browns but a negative adjustment for the Broncos.

We have included the 2008 team PossessionPoints charts for the Jets, Browns, and Broncos below.  We would love to speculate on how a Cutler deal would affect the Bucs and Lions, but we will save that for another article.