"Do I understand about Jay being hurt that we'd consider this?'' McDaniels said. "Sure. But I can tell you that it wasn't like there was any grand plan by us to trade Jay Cutler. That wasn't the case. But when we've told them [Cutler and Cook], I think it's fallen on deaf ears.''
I texted Cutler and got no response. In his comments to Mortensen earlier, he said his time in Denver "had run its course,'' the rift between him and McDaniels is "not something they want to fix,'' that McDaniels -- in their meeting Saturday -- "made it clear he could still entertain trading me,'' and said the coach "made it clear he wants his own guy.''
I texted McDaniels, and shortly before 1 a.m. Eastern on Monday, he called to react to Cutler's words.
"Oh boy,'' he said, and sighed. "No, no, no. Nothing like that was conveyed.'' And he sighed again.
"I think the hangup is, 'Well, you considered doing it once, would you ever consider it again?' It keeps coming out like I want my own guy. Thinking we want to trade him now is totally opposite what we've been trying to do here ... We've been trying like hell for two weeks to get a face-to-face meeting.''
What frustrates McDaniels is that the two sides met -- he thinks without acrimony -- and then word gets out that there was tension or vindictiveness in the meeting. "It's hard to believe we're sharing the same intentions and can have such different interpretations of the meeting,'' he said. "When we met [Saturday], my point was, 'We all know where this was, and now we all have to try to move forward.' After we met for a while, and went over a lot of the same ground we'd been over, Jay said to me, 'Can I have a few more hours to think?' I said, 'Yeah, give me a call on my cell phone.' He never called. Bus [Cook] called Brian [Xanders], but Jay didn't call me.''
