I apologize for ANOTHER Cutler thread but thought this article was pretty good:
Jay Cutler is tough. How tough? Enough to have played through a frightening, debilitating 30-pound weight loss—his Type 1 diabetes not yet diagnosed—with the Broncos in 2007, surviving on guts long after most of his physical strength had been sapped from him.
At the NFL Scouting Combine a year and a half earlier, Cutler had bench-pressed 225 pounds a mighty 23 times. During the cruel grind of the '07 campaign? Morbid curiosity got the best of him one day in early December. Total reps: three. But he played all 16 games that season.
Jay Cutler has played through physical ailments. His main negative, says Steve Greenberg, is looking detached on the field. | Sprained MCL | What they're saying
Cutler missed one game this season—a week after being sacked nine times by the Giants. But it was his only DNP; despite being sacked a league-high 52 times, he managed to play better and better as the season went on. Until, that is, he sat out the second half of the NFC Championship Game with the most talked-about Bears knee injury since Gale Sayers'.
"Don't give me this crap about him not being a tough guy," said former Bears linebacker Doug Buffone, a team captain throughout the 1970s, on Monday—a day when many current members of the Bears' organization lent strong support to the oft-criticized quarterback.
Buffone -- anything but a Bears apologist -- is a longtime radio host in Chicago. He knows what the city's fans, a group that apparently includes a whole lot of super-tough guys, are saying and feeling.
"Do I think Jay Cutler is a great quarterback? No, I don't. But this kid keeps bouncing up—that's who he is," Buffone said. "It's ridiculous for fans to react before knowing the facts (of Cutler's injury) and even worse for some of these ballplayers to do it—the current guys, and the former guys like Trent Dilfer and Deion Sanders. They didn't even know what the hell happened."
Nevertheless, Cutler's reputation never has been shakier. The question is: Why? And the answer really doesn't have anything to do with toughness. No, at its root, Chicago's problem—America's problem—with Jay Cutler is a matter of passion.
Cutler has a Grade II sprain/tear in his left knee; that's a concept everyone can wrap their brains around. What's much harder to understand are his dour looks, his sullen behavior, his off-putting aloofness. The negativity Cutler projects, despite his better intentions, cannot help the Bears in times of trouble. On the sideline Sunday, as his teammates clung desperately to hope, Cutler—well, you saw him—brooded.
Does Jay Cutler love football?
Does he love it as much as, say, Philip Rivers loves it? Rivers played in the playoffs in January 2008 with a torn ACL—that's tough. But it's his passion, his demonstrativeness, for which Rivers is known best.
A couple of years ago, Cutler told Sporting News of that trying 2007 season, "I had people (saying), 'Hey, you look like hell.' "
In a way, they're still saying it. Only they aren't referring to Cutler's health.
Read more:
http://www.sportingnews.com/nfl/story/2 ... z1C1Z1x8EN
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