Stephan Fatsis tells us that:

Cook and Cutler wanted to renegotiate the quarterback’s six-year contract, which has three years left. The current deal included $15 million in guaranteed payments. Cutler was paid a $1.275 million roster bonus in 2006 and a $7.9 million option bonus in 2007. But his base salaries are, by Pro Bowl-quarterback standards, meager, and a $12 million performance bonus isn’t due until 2011.

Cutler and Cook had financial motives, but Cutler’s actual salary for 2008 was still $6,497,500 million, once incentives were added in. He certainly wasn’t poor, and the base salary number is quite misleading, although he stood to gain much more if he renegotiated. As Fatsis says:

Ted Sundquist, the Broncos’ general manager when I was with the team, told me at the time that, because of the large lump-sum, back-end payout, the contract would probably be restructured before it expires. He said Bus Cook also expected that to happen. Did Cutler and Cook manufacture their hurt feelings over McDaniels’s trade talks and the coach’s subsequent ineffectual spin in an effort to get a new contract now, or get to another city that would give them one? I don’t know. But they certainly saw an opening.

Such restructuring are common, especially for the Broncos, but the real question is whether money was an obstacle in Cutler’s relationship with the team. And it may have been, since there are a number of contracts expiring next year, which could have made it difficult to renegotiate with the team — although not impossible.

We can only speculate. What seems clear from my study of the issue is that there was an extremely credulous fan base willing to swallow the story that Cutler was somehow so offended by the fact that his name came up in trade talks that he could no longer work with McDaniels. This was a truly in-credible story, but watching news coverage last year of Green Bay fans booing Aaron Rodgers in camp gives you an idea of the potency of this form of psychological appeal. Nobody asked Favre to retire, and his un-retirement put management over a barrel cap-wise, but the fans’ anger was still directed at GB’s management and Rodgers, who’s only crime was being the backup QB and heir apparent.

The display of booing at Packer camp would not have been lost on Cook, so I don’t think there can be any doubt about whether Cutler’s behavior was an attempt to push that emotional button once again. Money was clearly one of the goals, but it may have only been incidental for Cutler, who probably would have been able to obtain a new contract whether he stayed or was traded. Cutler no longer had any attachment to the Broncos once Shanahan and Bates were gone, but he might have stayed for the right price. And positioning himself before his contract expired was important, but I get the impression he wouldn’t have been a holdout if Shanahan was still coach, so it wasn’t so much a ‘money for money’s sake’ objective as it was a money in lieu of making him happy in other ways. There’s a hint of a privileged son losing his privilege, and contract numbers were just the scorecard.