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The Bears weren’t able to pawn Jay Cutler off on some other sucker.

So now they have to circle the wagons around him, and give him a big hug.

Bears guard Matt Slauson began that process last weekend, saying on WGN radio that the team was fully behind the quarterback whom no one believes they’re fully behind.

“Absolutely,” Slauson said, via the Chicago Sun-Times. “I have every confidence in him—his ability, his intelligence. The guy can be the best in the league. We just have to do a better job supporting him.

“We didn’t do a very good job of that last year. But, Jay can be every bit of a Tom Brady, a Peyton Manning, an Aaron Rodgers. He can be them, if not more.”

(Pauses, makes another pot of coffee, rubs eyes, proceeds.)

Cutler absolutely has the talent to approach those guys, but hasn’t approached their results.

And moving Brandon Marshall out (and possibly Eddie Royal in) isn’t exactly surrounding him with the weapons he needs.

Actually, the best thing for Cutler might be a “less-is-more” approach, as new coach John Fox has gotten a lot of wins by playing around a quarterback’s deficiencies (winning with Rodney Peete, Jake Delhomme and Tim Tebow), and limiting the things he’s asked to do.

If Cutler’s willing to play along with that (a less generous description would be “accept the handcuffs of a new offense”), he might become that guy Slauson’s talking about.

Or it might implode into a big ol’ mess.