Above all else, the Chicago Bears' coaching search was focused on finding a candidate whose intellect and ideas would provide quarterback Jay Cutler the environment to raise his game to elite status.

Tuesday, we noted Cutler must be a willing recipient to a new level of coaching. Wednesday, as I discussed in this week's Blogger Blitz video, the Bears decided that Marc Trestman was best suited for the role.

Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young, now an ESPN analyst, spoke eloquently this week on ESPN 1000 about the "platform" Trestman will provide and how Cutler will come to view himself as escaping "quarterback purgatory" if he buys into the program. Young played for Trestman in the mid-1990s when both were with the San Francisco 49ers.

"He can be as good as anybody if he wants to be," Young said. "But you need the platform to find out how good you are. I was in a platform in Tampa Bay [early in his career] where you are not going to find out. Then I got to San Francisco, and now I'm going to find out. I might find out that I still stink. I might suck at it, but I'm going to find out. ...

"You realize, 'I've been in purgatory, quarterback purgatory. I've been in a lot of places in the league where the quarterback is in purgatory.' You get discouraged, especially when you see others doing things and you think, 'That would be a platform I would love to have.' … I've got to believe that when Jay sees it, he'll see it as the greatest opportunity of [his] life."

For his part, Cutler told the Bears' website that Trestman is a "great hire." He said he has spoken with people who know Trestman and done other research as well.

"He understands quarterbacks," Cutler said. "He understands their thought process and the minds of quarterbacks and what we have to go through. It's going to be a quarterback-friendly system and I can't wait to get started with him."