Here's an article that touches on both IB and FF's points.
IB is right. When everything is great, Rex Grossman gets MVP consideration
Excuse patrol won't cut Jay Cutler much slack in 2011By Mariotti imitator (Greg Couch)
Time does not heal all wounds. For the Chicago Bears and Jay Cutler, it’s going to take a Super Bowl. The Bears reported to camp Friday, their first time back to work since the NFC championship game against rival Green Bay, when Cutler sat down and gave up.
Or maybe he got hurt and had to quit.
You can believe it any way you want. The truth isn’t going to matter anyway.
After the fact, after NFL players tweeted like crazy about what a quitter Cutler is, and after Bears fans had disowned him as a coward, the Bears said that Cutler had a minor tear in the MCL in his knee, theoretically late in the first half. He was told he shouldn’t play but went out for one series in the second half, and then, with too much pain, gave in, dejected.
That might be true, might not. It is easy for the Bears to concoct a story like that afterward to protect their investment. The thing is, Cutler looked dejected throughout the first half, too, when he wasn’t hurt but was awful.
Everyone saw him sitting there in the second half, but it’s unclear when, exactly, he gave up.
Bears fans likely believe there is a little truth to both sides of the story, that Cutler quit and that he was hurt. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. One game from the Super Bowl, against the most-hated opponent, and you’d think that was a moment you’d give up your right arm for. Or your knee, even with a minor ligament tear.
This is not going to be an easy page to turn for the Bears.
Cutler might well have been hurt, but he’s also highly immature. And now that the Bears are getting receiver Roy Williams from Dallas, Cutler is going to be short on excuses if things don’t go right again.
In tough-guy Bears mentality, a grand Chicago image, someone would have to fight you to the ground to keep you out of a major game. To be a Bear is to be unquestionably tough, to play in the bitter cold, in the wind off Lake Michigan, to hit the other guy in the mouth. If you lose, you at least take a piece of the opponent with you.
Being a Bears fan also means you question your own quarterback. The team has had one crummy one after another. Cutler came in as the savior, though he left Denver in a feud with owners and coaches. He hadn’t won one playoff game before last year and didn’t even lead Vanderbilt to any heights.
He was terrible in Chicago his first year, and then a little better his second. But there was suspicion, still, about how he would do in The Moment.
The players say the right things now, and the tweeters have backed off, either because they learned the facts or because they knew it was bad form to rip him. Cutler’s teammates have always taken his side publicly, and maybe they do privately, too.
But they play hurt. And you wonder if he has to earn their respect back again.
Cutler’s news this offseason was about his romance, then engagement, then breakup, with Kristin Cavallari, from the MTV reality series The Hills.
Now, Cavallari went on Twitter to refute gossip that even she questioned whether Cutler was really hurt against Green Bay.
“I never said ANYTHING about Jay’s knee injury," she tweeted. “I’ve always backed him 100%. Stop trying to start (stuff). I know he was seriously hurt."
Cutler has never had a decent offensive line with the Bears. He hasn’t had receivers, either. In his rookie year, they kept him in the pocket, even though his best work comes when he’s rolling out. Then, he was introduced to the Mike Martz offense, which was supposed to suit him.
It did, sort of.
The line is still going to be shaky, and the Bears traded Cutler’s good friend and defender, starting tight end Greg Olsen.
Cutler is not much of a talker, and comes off as aloof. He isn’t a winner. And when the team needed him to look the part of a leader, he sat down because his knee hurt.
But the Bears have no choice but to believe in Cutler. He has spent a career living on amazing talent and potential. But now he’s 28, and the doubts outweigh everything else. It’s his own fault, because of his attitude and lack of leadership, that people didn’t believe him.
He has to earn back the trust, and with a little foresight, he could have been calling all his teammates in the offseason. Maybe he did.
But he’ll have to prove it in battle. Last chance for Jay Cutler and the Bears. No excuses
Read more:
http://aol.sportingnews.com/nfl/story/2 ... z1TnnN8rG5
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