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BOURBONNAIS, Ill. – The subject was the past. Chicago Bears coach Marc Trestman was not talking about his current team, but as he spoke on the fields at Olivet Nazarene University this week, the same idea of success kept coming up.

"Your quarterback has to play at an efficient level," he said.

He must have said the words four or five times, each coming as a qualifier for what can make a head coach seem brilliant. If a football life has taught Trestman anything it's that the most important player is the starting quarterback and therefore a coach's most significant relationship is with that player.

And finally Jay Cutler might have a legitimate chance to succeed in Chicago.

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For years the Bears have shoved new offenses and new offensive coordinators at Cutler under the guidance of Lovie Smith, a head coach who was devoted to defense. Nothing can destroy a quarterback more than dumping a new playbook every spring, its pages filled with new diagrams and paragraphs, every play called something different than the year before.

Most quarterbacks will tell you it takes about three years to really learn an offense, finally understanding its subtleties and complications until the whole thing becomes automatic. Part of the reason Peyton Manning, Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers have dominated the NFL for so many years is that they have almost never changed offenses. Their springs are spent showing new players the right pass routes and not trying to figure out if a tight end cuts left or right on a particular play.

And while, yes, the Bears are pushing another new system at Cutler, it is one that should be comfortable for him. It is fast-paced, filled with quick passes that benefit a quarterback who can make split-second decisions. It allows the quarterback to look at defenses and call something else. It puts control in the quarterback's hands. It should make Cutler look very good.

On Tuesday the quarterback acknowledged as much. He said he is growing accustomed with a new system that he sees benefiting himself.

"I'm trying to get the ball out of my hands as fast as possible," he said.

Chicago loves to complain about Cutler but he also hasn't had a great opportunity to thrive here, not the way he did in Denver when he threw for 4,526 yards and 25 touchdowns in 2008 and appeared destined to be on that list everyone likes to keep about quarterbacks. The one that described with a single, nebulous word: "elite."

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