The Cutler Did It

Sports offer us real life theater. The excitement of sports, such as NFL football, always goes beyond the action on the football field, in some manner. This is a big part of what captivates us.

Sports often produce stars who elicit mixed reactions, controversy. There are characters that we, generally, either love or hate. Bears quarterback Jay Cutler has fully evolved into one of those characters.


BUCKED THE BRONCOS

Cutler was drafted 11th overall in the first round of the 2006 draft by the Denver Broncos. He arrived with high expectations as an eventual replacement for incumbent signal caller Jake Plummer, who has just guided the Broncos to a 13-3 records and hosting the AFC Championship game the year before.

Controversy attached to Cutler from the beginning. The Broncos started 7-4 in 2006, though Plummer struggled. Then Broncos Head Coach Mike Shanahan benched Plummer and replaced him with rookie Jay Cutler.

The Broncos would only win two games for the rest of the year and the Broncos missed the playoffs. Cutler, statistically, outplayed Plummer, but the win/loss record is the only stat that counts after Week 17 and Cutler and the Broncos fell woefully short. Plummer would retire after the season, rather than agree to play for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, to whom he was traded in the following offseason.

Shanahan was fired after the 2008 season and replaced with Josh McDaniels. Allegedly, McDaniels covertly made attempts to bring in free agent Matt Cassell to replace Cutler. Cassell signed with the Kansas City Chiefs, Cutler got wind of want happened, and Cutler, the franchise quarterback, demanded out of Denver.

The Cutler flap forced a QB swap with the Chicago Bears for their serviceable but unspectacular quarterback, Kyle Orton. The Broncos would suffer two consecutive, and wrenching, losing season and McDaniels was fired after his second season as coach. The Cutler Carnage continued.
    

The Internet has endless rips on Cutler. He may not be the NFL QB with whom fans would most like to drink a beer. 1



JAY THE JERK

Jake Plummer…Mike Shanahan…Josh McDaniels…future employment is not something one may easily associate with colleagues of Jay Cutler. Nonetheless, the arrival of Cutler before the 2009 season was celebrated in Chicago. The Bears acquired a player who appeared to be a long term solution at the quarterback position, something the team has not had for any extended period since local legend Jim McMahon was with the team in the late 1980s.



Cutler has received a myriad of criticisms since arriving in Chicago. He has been criticized for his body language during games. Reporters have said teammates described Cutler as “distant” in the locker room.



He was accused by NFL players on other teams of not being tough enough and checking out the NFC title game, this past January, with an injury he could have played through (which turned out to be a torn knee ligament). He was even made into the bad guy for the alleged manner in which he (supposedly) dumped ex-fiancé and reality starlet Kristin Cavallari over the summer. The label “Jay the Jerk” has stuck with Cutler among many in the public eye.

Cutler's ex, Kristin Cavallari. He must be doing something right if he can dump her. 2



CHICAGO CUTLERY

Bad luck…lightning rod…controversial…jerk. Every unflattering descriptor under the sun could be tossed at Cutler. Since arriving in Chicago, though, he has been a leader on the field. The guy wins, sometimes having to do so the hard way.

Through 34 starts in Chicago, Cutler has been sacked 101 times, and hit countless other times. The Bears offensive line has been Swiss cheese. In a (offensive coordinator) Mike Martz scheme that relies heavily on deep, downfield passes, this is a recipe for quarterback stew. Cutler has only missed one start since coming to the Bears.

The bottom line, in the NFL, is winning. The goal is to reach the Super Bowl. The Bears failed to reach the playoffs in the two seasons after their appearance in Super Bowl XLI and before Cutler’s arrival in 2009. The Bears did not have a winning record in those two seasons, combined, prior to Cutler’s tenure.

Since Cutler’s arrival, the Bears have won more games than they have lost. They won a division title last season, and hosted the 2010 NFC Championship Game. Cutler continues to be a high profile member of the “Eat Grass Club”, having been sacked 14 times this season through three games. Yet he often finds way to turn broken plays into gains and the Bears have had an opportunity to win each week because of Cutler’s quick decisions, having never trailed by more than 7 points at halftime in 2010.

Cutler celebrates with teammates during the Bears' divisional round playoff win over the Seattle Seahawks last year. 3

IF YOU CAN’T HAVE BRADY

Jay Cutler is not in the same class of quarterbacks as Tom Brady or Peyton Manning. However, only Brady and Manning are in the class of Brady or Manning. Still, Cutler has fulfilled his role of leading the offense and putting his team in position to win, better than the majority of starting quarterbacks in the NFL.

You can love him. You can hate him (and a lot of people do). But the Bears are better off with him than without him.

Cutler's time in Denver was just a boot camp for what he would experience in Chicago. 4

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1, 2) Images from thesportsbank.net

3) Image from host.madison.com

4) Image from worldnews108.blogspot.com

Peyton Manning, Josh McDaniels, and Fat Albert - Confused, Dumb, and Dumber

Yours truly was away from civilization for a week, making The Daily Hat Trick a little less than “daily”. To borrow a catch phrase from sportstalk host Jim Rome, “I took so much vacation because I got so much vacation,”

Now I am back home sweet home and you, the reader, get your daily dose of the Hat Trick back. I hope that is a good thing.

There have been so many occurrences in the world of sports over the past 10 days or so, that I could not pick one topic to feature for the first day back in publication, so I thought I would just pitch in my two cents on some issues that jumped to the center of my NFL dashboard in the last week.

Peyton Manning

What is going on in Indianapolis? Nobody is perfect and even the most elite athletes have slumps, but Peyton Manning has not struggled as badly as he has in recent weeks since his rookie season in 1998. Consider the following quote from Peyton Manning’s coach:

“Well, I'll start off by saying this: do not blame that game on the defense, OK? I don't care who you play, whether it's a high school team, a junior college team, a college team, much less an NFL team; when you turn the ball over five times -- four interceptions, one for a touchdown, three others in field position to set up touchdowns -- you ain't going to beat anybody I just talked about. Anybody. All right? And that was a disgraceful performance, in my opinion. We threw that game. We gave it away by doing that. We gave 'em the friggin' game. In my opinion, that sucked. Ah. You know? You can't turn the ball over five times like that. Holy crap! I don't know who the hell we think we are when we do something like that! Unbelievable...five turnovers. One of them for -- We've thrown four interceptions for touchdowns this year. That might be an NFL record! And we've still got six games left, so there's no telling how many we'll have. That's pitiful! I mean, it's absolutely pitiful to perform like that. Pitiful!” 1

If you are like me and live, breathe, and sleep sports, you probably know exactly where I am going with this and had a slight chuckle, unless you live in Indianapolis. If you are a causal fan (or under the age of 20), it seems like something Colts Head Coach Jim Caldwell could say, given the mediocrity of his team and his quarterback. Here is the rest of the quote:

“What's that? Ah -- Playoffs? Don't talk about -- playoffs?! You kidding me?! Playoffs?! I just hope we can win a game! Another game!” 2

Unless you go out of your way to avoid every commercial during NFL games, you know that those were the words of Peyton Manning’s and the Colts’ former coach (and one of my favorite all-time NFL personalities), Jim Mora, Sr. Those words were spoken in the midst of a Colts tailspin in 2001, the last time the Colts had a losing record and the last time they missed the playoffs.

That would also be Mora’s last year as an NFL head coach. At the moment, history appears to be dangerously close to repeating itself in Indianapolis. Jim Caldwell may follow Mora’s footsteps if he runs the ship of the defending AFC champs into the ground much further. Manning is turning the ball over at an alarming rate that would cause Brett Favre to raise an eyebrow.


2001 - "PLAYOFFS?!?"   6

DeLorean with Flux Capacitor 7

2010 - "Hey, y'all. Watch this!"  8

Just what is wrong with Manning? I have had friends make clever suggestions about sibling rivalry pressure and one suggestion (from a chick) that maybe Peyton and wife Ashley Manning, er, um, have not been practicing the motions to make a little Manning. At that point, I thought I had heard everything.

It is true that Manning is missing many of his weapons: Dallas Clark, Austin Collie, Joseph Addai (or anything resembling a competent running game), and a defense that leaves him much room for error. But, as University of Texas coaching legend Darrell Royal once said, when you throw the ball, three things can happen, and two of them are bad. Manning, in the opinion of many, may be the greatest quarterback (if not greatest player) ever to play the game. If so, he needs to do a better job of taking care of the football.

Josh McDaniels

Good riddance to bad rubbish! Being a blogger and not a journalist, I am not bound by the journalistic pillar of being unbiased and therefore am free to voice my personal opinion on newsworthy people. I cannot think of a head coach that I have liked less in the past 10 years than Josh McDaniels. Those who know me personally know the depth of loathing that I have for Bill Belichick and his era of Patriots, but the man has won three Super Bowls. If Sean Payton, coach of my New Orleans Saints, decided to suddenly retire and The Hoodie were hired as the next coach, I would welcome him with open arms. McDaniels is a horse (or a Bronco) of another color, though.

"You've got a lot to learn, son." 5

It requires a truly special brand of stupidity and sophomoric hubris to ruin a franchise that, until this season, was considered a legitimate threat to represent the AFC in the Super Bowl almost every season. It requires a rare lack of people skills, a lack which dwarfs the lack possessed by computer geeks and Dungeons & Dragons players, to run off your franchise quarterback before your first draft by losing his trust because you were not forthright with him about your attempt to use him as trade bait for greener grass. It takes an unprecedented failure to prepare in order to allow an Oakland Raiders franchise – bankrupt of an identity in its offensive backfield – to come into your stadium, historically one of the roughest places for visitors in the history of the NFL, and bitch-slap you by hanging 59 points on you. And it takes a complete failure to grasp concepts instilled into most of us as children, such as, “Do as I say and not as I do,” to watch your mentor, Belichick, and your team have their reputations tarnished and their pockets lightened by the Spygate controversy, then do the same stupid (and unethical) thing when your coaching future is already on rocky ground and give the media the gift of the label, “Spygate II”

It sickens me to see any professional sports franchise drug down by stupidity. Arrogance dragging down a team (a team I do not like)…amusing. Stupidity? Annoying...! GOOD RIDDANCE!

Albert Haynesworth

Hey hey hey! No more Fat Albert! Who did not see this coming? It only cost the Redskins $40 million and what feels like a lost season! Albert Haynesworth displayed a level of professionalism that could cause Randy Moss to give him a tongue lashing. Based on reports I have read and heard on sports radio, Haynesworth, apparently, refused to speak to Redskins Head Coach Mike Shanahan at team headquarters, asking the General Manager, Bruce Allen, to relay the message. Hey Albert: eighth grade called and it wants its conflict resolution methods back! REALLY, Albert? REALLY? “Tell Coach I’m not speaking to him.,”??? What is next? He takes his ball and goes home?

Hey hey hey! Can you tell the difference? 3

The Redskins took care of that for Fat Albert, suspending him for the remaining four games of the regular season and signaling that his offseason release is all but immanent. There are bad free agent moves and free agent busts in the NFL every year, whether caused by injury, system incompatibility, decreased motivation, aging, or otherwise. Daniel Snyder may be the KING of throwing away money on the wrong free agents. The stench of the Albert Haynesworth signing stinks so badly that those in the State of Denmark during the time of Shakespeare’s Hamlet would faint.

"Peeee-youuuuu" 4

1, 2) Source: Wikipedia

3) Image from grudge-match.com

4) Image from sportsfanlive.com

5) Image from ozelink.com.au

6) Image from starvalleyindependent.com

7) Image from gadzooki.com

8) Image from coltzilla.com