BOURBONNAIS — Jay Cutler’s sixth training camp with the Bears has a significantly different feel than his fifth.
Cutler, whose second son was born in May, arrived in a conversion van, as opposed to the Cadillac Escalade he drove here a year ago—at least the color of each was white. His new seven-year, $126 million contract replaced the questions he faced last summer about his future in Chicago.
And after the Bears’ offense broke out in coach Marc Trestman’s debut season, there are new, higher expectations of what Cutler and the offense should accomplish.
“We’ve still got a lot of work to do,” Cutler said Thursday afternoon shortly after he arrived at Olivet Nazarene University. “We still got a lot of things to prepare on. I think everyone in the NFL is confident right now. Everyone likes what they have on paper. Everyone likes their roster. That includes us, but that doesn’t guarantee us anything.”
There are many reasons for confidence in the Bears’ offense, which ranked third in the NFL last season in yards per play. Most notably, all 11 starters from last year’s offense are back. But Cutler downplayed the notion that overconfidence could be a factor.
“We haven’t had a lot of success, so I don’t think it’s that hard,” he said. “It’s not like we’re coming off a monster season after monster season. I still think this is still a hungry group. There’s a lot left that we want to prove.”
Given last year’s offensive success and the Bears’ heavy offseason investment in the defensive side of the roster, Cutler understands Chicago’s collective optimism about the upcoming campaign. He’s cautious, though, about any hype.
“We can’t let that kind of seep into our mindset,” he said. “We haven’t done anything yet. We’ve got to take this camp seriously and get out of it as much as we can.”
Twitter @Rich_Campbell