Broncos quarterback Jay Cutler said Sunday night he has formally asked Denver to trade him and confirmed that a Saturday meeting with first-year coach Josh McDaniels ended badly from his perspective, while McDaniels offered another viewpoint on Sunday night.

"I went in there with every intention of solving the issue, being a Bronco, moving forward as a Bronco," Cutler said. "We weren't in there but about 20 minutes, [McDaniels] did most of the talking and as far as I'm concerned, he made it clear he wants his own guy. He admitted he wanted Matt Cassel because he said he has raised him up from the ground as a quarterback. He said he wasn't sorry about it. He made it clear that he could still entertain trading me because, as he put it, he'll do whatever he feels is in the best interest of the organization.

Jay Cutler said while new Denver coach Josh McDaniels hasn't been critical of him, Cutler can no longer trust McDaniels. Matthew Emmons/US Presswire

"At the end of the meeting, he wasn't like, 'Jay, I want you as our quarterback, you're our guy.' It felt like the opposite. He basically said that I needed to tell him if we can't work this out, to let him know," Cutler added. "I thought he was antagonizing me and that was disappointing because I was ready to move on, committed as a Bronco. Really, I figured we'd hash things out, shake hands, laugh a little and move forward. What happened [Saturday] was the last thing I expected. If I didn't think it could be fixed, I never would have come back to Denver. It was painfully obvious to me and Bus [Cook, his agent] it's not something they want to fix."

Consequently, Cutler instructed Cook, who also attended the meeting, to formally request a trade. The quarterback said he left town late Sunday and would skip McDaniels' first (nonmandatory) team meeting Monday as the Broncos begin their offseason program.

"The Denver Broncos confirm that Jay Cutler has requested a trade," team spokesman Jim Saccomano told The Associated Press on Monday.

Broncos owner Pat Bowlen told The Denver Post on Sunday that he was disappointed with how Cutler has handled the situation. In a telephone interview with ESPN, McDaniels was reluctantly expansive on the story.

"I really have wanted to avoid a he-said, she-said thing but it's only fair for us to present the Bronco side of the story rather than let things get taken out of context," McDaniels said. "There's been a pattern here for the past two weeks the way things [have been represented] in our communications. I don't think anything that happened [Saturday] was out of the ordinary. At the end of the meeting, Jay said he had thought about things quite a bit and requested a few more hours to mull things over. He said he wanted to talk to Bus on how to proceed. He was gonna call me on my cell phone and that never happened. Instead, Bus called [GM] Brian [Xanders].

"Again, I think that's been a pattern. I couldn't get [Cutler] to talk to me for two weeks or to talk to Mr. Bowlen. Then when he came here this weekend, we couldn't get a one-on-one meeting, just me and him alone. He wanted Bus in there, so I had Brian sit in, too. And it was the four of us. There wasn't any yelling, none of that. I can't believe we get to a totally different [interpretation].