Chicago Bears Have a Quitter On Their Hands in Jay Cutler

I’ve been wrestling with myself as whether or not to comment on Jay Cutler and his knee injury that kept him out of the second half of the Chicago Bears’ NFC Championship game to the Green Bay Packers, but now I’m convinced Cutler is a quitter.

First of all, I’ve torn my MCL in a football game, so I know a little bit of the pain he was feeling and it’s not fun.

Cutler says he can’t remember how and when he hurt himself, so let me start by saying it definitely wasn’t that bad then. When I tore my MCL, I was trying to make a tackle after we had just thrown an interception (I was playing center) and when I went to plant my leg, I had one of my own teammates blocked into me.

My foot stayed planted in the ground, and my knee touched the other — keep in mind my legs were about shoulder-width apart. In that instant, it was one of the worst pains I had ever felt. All I could do was grit my teeth and grab the ground around me.

After being taken off the field and tossing some ice on it for a series or two, I headed back into the game. The team we were playing used a noseguard, so I consistently had 320 pounds coming for me and was forced to plant on that knee for the rest of the game.

If I could do that, then Cutler could have planted enough to throw the ball. Philip Rivers did it with a torn ACL and MCL, Drew Brees did it with a torn MCL, Donovan McNabb and David Garrard did it with broken bones in their legs, etc. The point is that with the right amount of heart and toughness, it could have been done.

There were then reports coming out that Cutler had walked up a flight of stairs later that night. A lot of people wrote that off, but let me tell you that’s not something one does easily with a torn MCL. I had to have help going up and down stairs at our hotel because the slightest amount of pressure was painful beyond belief.

Even sleeping was a problem as my knee swelled to the size of a softball, so walking up and down stairs on my own was out of the question.

So hearing that he did that tells me he was not hurt as badly as the team is letting on. Personally, I think Lovie Smith recognized how poorly Cutler was playing and used it as an excuse to get him out of the game, and Cutler used it as an excuse to escape a game that was clearly frustrating him.

Cutler has the skills to be a great quarterback, but his attitude is a bit “Ryan Leafish” and will need a serious adjustment if he’s ever going to take the Bears where they want to go.