Jay Cutler Introduced in Halas Hall

The man who Bears fans hope will be the first franchise quarterback in recent memory, Jay Cutler, was introduced officially as a Chicago Bear at a press conference late Friday afternoon.

All the obvious questions were asked, and Cutler played a good political game -- choosing to focus on the future and not really go into past details about his falling out with the Denver Broncos. He did mention that there were some things that he should have done differently.

He made sure to say all the right things about his new team as well, all the while remaining in good spirits and even causing laughter in the media throng.

Some highlights:

-- On Bears offensive coordinator, Ron Turner, who wasn't interested in Cutler out of high school (Turner was the University of Illinois' head coach at the time): "That was a long time ago. I think it's kind of funny now at this point, that I'm back here and he's here. Things happen for a reason. I'm lucky to be here and I'm excited to get to work with Ron."

-- When asked if he remembers the last time the Bears had a franchise quarterback, Cutler laughed and said, "I don't think I was alive," illustrating the fact that he grew up a Bears fan and knows the franchise's brutal history of quarterbacking. Someone asked him about Sid Luckman, the Bears Hall of Fame quarterback from the World War II era, and he laughed and said, "I'm gonna have to do some research on Sid."

-- Cutler compared entering Chicago to his "second draft day," and acknowledged how much he appreciates the zeal Bears fans have for their storied franchise. When asked about the level of fan excitement in the past 24 hours, Bears general manager Jerry Angelo said he was even a bit surprised. "I'm really shocked," Angelo said, "I knew we'd create some new energy, but it's almost like a tsunami type of energy."

Lovie Smith, for his part, wanted to remain excited or realistic. When asked if the atmosphere felt surreal, he backed off, "I don't know about surreal, I mean, we're excited about it. Are we asking Jay to be the savior and things like that? We're really not. We're just asking him to be a teammate."

-- The offensive scheme will remain largely unchanged, but Smith did acknowledge that, "Jay does bring a cannon for an arm, and we'll see what we can do with that." For his part, Cutler stated that he was alright with the run-first philosophy because you have to run the ball and stop the run to win in the NFL.

Finally, when Angelo was asked about Orlando Pace -- who was also brought to Chicago Thursday -- you could hear Cutler chime in with, "he's pretty good," from the background.