I think you are missing the point. The quotes are included to say that Cutler’s injury was not serious, they are included as evidence that he is thought of as a quitter by his peers. That’s the problem the article is referencing - Cutler has no respect from other players because of his attitude and work habits.
I am amazed the Packers are favored, and I’m a Packers fan. But I am not sure why you put experts in quotes. They are phenominally good, though making a book isn’t completely about working out who is going to win, its also about making sure there is sufficient action on both sides.
Actually the defense played really poorly in the first half. They gave up over a 100 yards rushing in the first half and Rodgers was dissecting the Tampa 2 and Cover 3. They put us in a hole and we relied on them to win the field position game and they didn’t. The defense was good enough to get us to a Super Bowl and they turned it on in the second half, but they weren’t “brilliant”.
I want him to be as good as he can be. I see all his potential and we’ve never had a guy close to him in Chicago. Yeah, he’s flawed right now but until these jackasses calling for his head offer up a suggestion for an alternative I’ll continue to ignore them. It sucks seeing how complete a player Rodgers is, when Jay has every bit of his physical skill, but the reality is that the odds of finding a guy like that is pretty slim. In Cutler at least we have a guy with the potential to be great, as opposed to a guy who will max out at average like the Ortons, Cassels, Hasselbecks, Hennes of the world.
Hopefully Cutler will, just for 3 or 4 seconds tonight or at some point this offseason, take a breath and become slightly introspective. Hopefully he’ll eventually see that he needs to work harder at his footwork and delivery, see that he needs to tighten up his recognition of coverages and watch more film than everyone else on the team combined.
I don’t mind him being occasionally petulant and giving an aloof vibe on the sidelines. I don’t care if he gives crappy interviews and doesn’t sob and throw tantrums after losses. However, he’d better realize that he’ll never get the benefit of the doubt from anyone by being that way. And if you out work everyone else and your teammates see and respect that, it’ll all work out. If you want to coast and let “Jay be Jay” then be prepared for the pressure cooker to heat up. He can only blame himself for that.
Wilbon is right that the organization has been awful at developing a QB. Cutler’s inability to correct his flaws and the coaching staff’s apparently willingness to accept that is at least as much on them as it is on him. Cutler exhibited many of the flaws today that reflect the same flaws he’s had his whole career. The negative article isn’t about this one bad performance, it’s highlighting a pattern or activity from him and the team using this game as a example. In that it’s wholly justified and fair.
That other players are questioning his toughness and asking if he quit, that’s bullshit. But, like I said above Jay’s never earned the benefit of the doubt. Those players and media members calling him out should be ashamed, it’s a classless move, but Jay reaps what he sows. I’m sure there’s some connection between his disinterest at working to bolster his media image and to work to bolster his technique on the field, it’s a pattern of behavior that I hope this disaster can affect some change in.
I’d sign off on that. Lovie isn’t as terrible as I’ve constantly argued, but the staff on the whole is simply dysfunctional. I think that Lovie can be a effective head coach, even a good one, but he’s a shitty CEO. He seems unwilling to enforce discipline amongst his assistants, beyond Martz - he’s always allowed stupidity to fester and grow - and the personnel decisions continue to be flawed at best. He’ll find a guy like Mike Tice who seems to have done a fine job with his group, but he handcuffs the guy by making him work with subpar players and a boneheaded scheme. He constantly allows inadequate players to survive on his rosters forever because he apparently is unwilling to be the bad guy and give them the boot. He prefers “company men” and “Lovie’s guys” to take precedence over actual quality players.
I suspect Lovie could succeed under a better GM and team president. Football men who command respect and can force Lovie to make the hard decisions he doesn’t make. Teams can’t survive when the inmates run the asylum. That seems to be what happened with the players and coaches in Dallas, in Chicago it seems that’s happening with the coaches and the management. Lovie needs strict management, management that’s willing to apply some pressure to staff and players alike. Management that makes life a little less comfortable for all involved.
Lovie motivates his players very well and runs a class organization, I can’t take that away from him. He lets details slip time and time again though. He won’t be fired and he probably shouldn’t be fired. However, I don’t know if he can ever correct his flaws here in Chicago because that would require a restructuring at the top and coaches rarely cede power and influence and when they’ve been in place as long as he has change becomes nigh impossible.
Sure, I get it. They want equivalent action on both sides. Then they rake in the dough. And usually they do that by making the better team the favorite and adjusting based on betting trends. I just can’t understand how they can favor the Pack against a Steeler team who has at least as good of a defense as the Bears and a much better offense.
Of course I’m considering the entire game. There wouldn’t have been a “hole” in the first half, or, at least, it wouldn’t have been as large, if the offense could have scored once or twice.* I concede that maybe it wasn’t brilliant, but it was pretty damn good, holding a pack team that scored 48 points in Atlanta to two offensive touchdowns, and one of those touchdowns came after a short drive in which the offense lost field position by not getting first downs deep in its own territory.
*Why didn’t the Bears attempt the 48-yard field goal? They have one of the best kickers. I can only assume it was weather, wind, etc.
The only thing that springs to mind is that the game is indoors, or quasi indoors, or whatever you want to call it. Given how the Packers played in Atlanta, Vegas might have made the Steelers favorites were the game played outdoors/in bad weather.
Didn’t you watch the Steelers this year? They aren’t that good. They are getting by on hype at this point.
The Steelers are depleted on their offensive line. They lost their Pro Bowl Center today and are in bad shape at the Tackle positions. Big Ben is banged up, has been all year, and as a result their offense tends to go quiet. Defensively they aren’t as good as the Packers in the secondary and with Farrior hurt they may be worse at the LB position too. The Packers have their flaws too, but the implication that the Steelers are a juggernaut is silly.
Look at he last 2 playoff games. The Steelers needed a complete and total collapse and 2 dropped TD catches by Ravens WRs to win at home in the Divisional Round. The Ravens had them dominated and while you can credit the Steelers for a nice comeback you have to look closely at how they got into such a position. Today they could have got beat by the Jets, a streaky team with a mediocre QB. The Jets dominated them in the second half and if that call on the strip-sack at the end of the second quarter had gone the other way they might have ended up losing that game.
The Steelers haven’t played a QB of Rodgers caliber in a long time, probably since Brady in week 10, and neither he or Brees can move around the way Rodgers can. Defensively the Packers can do everything the Jets did in that second half and can do it better. The Steelers have played 2 good halves of football in the playoffs and didn’t exactly get tested much in the final weeks of the season.
The Packers scored on the opening possession, going 84 yards. Can’t really blame the offense on that one. The defense gave up drives on the next 2 possessions that allowed the Packers to pin us on our 11 and 2 yard lines respectively. Now, you’d like the offense to flip the field on them there, but when you’re in the shadow of your goal posts that usually doesn’t happen. The Packers scored following those shifts in field position. The offense wasn’t given a chance because the defense surrendered so many yards in the first half. On the 3 possessions in the 1st half where the offense got the ball outside the 20 yard line they moved the ball into scoring position 3 times. Which brings us to…
I have no idea. Presumably he watched the Packers shoehorn the Bears on the 2 yard line and wanted his defense to get the same opportunity. However, I think you need to get points when you can. The Bears passed on 2, not just 1, potential FGs in the half. They punted from the 34 and the 31 yard lines. In both cases they threw incomplete passes on 3rd down as opposed to check downs or runs that would have at least shortened the kicks to a makeable distance. This is on Martz and possibly Cutler, depending on how the offense is structured. Sometimes getting 6 on 3rd and 12 is the conservative thing to do.
Can someone explain this NFL rule to me? Why couldn’t Cutler come back in the game after Wazzisname and Hanie replaced him? The announcers mentioned that it had to do with Hanie’s coming in during the third quarter, not the fourth.
Naive soul that I am, I never knew there were restrictions on players going off the field and coming back on. Is this some sort of rule applicale to QBs only?
I don’t recall him ever complaining about the Bears’ luck before this season. The 2010 Bears enjoyed possibly the luckiest season by any team in the history of the NFL.
You’re nuts. The Packers are clearly the best team in football this year, and should easily handle the Steelers.
Quoted for truth.
Cutler was the quittingest quitter since Complainian Tomlinson in the 2007 divisional round against the Patriots. (That’s the game he moped on the sideline for the last 3.5 quarters, and also the one where the Patriots mocked Steroid Merriman’s douchetastic “Light’s Out” dance after the game. That’s what inspired Antonio Cromartie to revert to his whiney Chargers days his smack talk of Tom Brady last week.)
Cutler was just pathetic. Not to steal from Dio, but seriously, do you think Favre would have been sidelined with a knee injury that wasn’t serious enough to prevent him from walking around on the sideline? Hell, Eli Manning wouldn’t have been sidelined by that injury. Cutler pussed out, clear as day.
Even if he gets surgery, that won’t be convincing. Tom Brady needed surgery but played out his game like a man.
This is completely delusional. On any other day the Bears would’ve beaten them easily? Give me some of what you’re smoking.
It’s applicable only to the Emergency Quarterback (EQB), and my understanding is very different from the announcers. I kept waiting for them to correct themselves, but they never did. I believe I’m correct and they are wrong.
NFL rosters have a max of 53 players, and you can only dress 45 for any one game. The EQB is a special exemption to the 45-man-dress rule. He’s a 46th man you can dress. However, for the privilege of the extra roster spot, he’s got special rules attached. If he comes in at any point during the first three quarters, no QBs ahead of him on the depth chart is allowed to return to the game until the fourth quarter. By rule, any QB on your team – EQB or not – is allowed to play in the fourth quarter without restriction.
This rule has been around for a while, so I was quite surprised to hear both Buck and Aikman saying that they couldn’t return in the fourth quarter. I can’t imagine it’s a special playoff rule, and the idea that the starters can never come back to the game if the EQB enters before the 4th quarter is retarded on its surface. Why the “until the fourth quarter” restriction at all?
EDIT: Looks like I’m wrong. That rule makes no sense to me. Why have a special rule for the 4th quarter at all? Why not just say once the EQB comes in, nobody else can return?
If Rodgers had played like he had today, and if “Good Cutler” had been out on the field, then yes, they would’ve won easily. Rodgers had a great start and then fell apart as the game went on. The back-up QB got within a touchdown, I don’t see why it would be so hard to think that the Bears could’ve beaten that team.
The whole line isn’t based off the results of one game. Single games can be flukey. Team A could destroy team B, then B destroys C, yet somehow C beats A. Sometimes games between bad defenses and high flying offenses just turn out as 13-7 games. Sports books don’t base the game off what happened last week.
Atlanta won more games than Chicago this year, and yet the Packers utterly destroyed them. That single-game result is probably at least as much on the minds of bookmakers as this one, especially since the conditions in Dallas are more similar to it.
The fact that both teams are road teams for the superbowl probably favors the Packers in the minds of sports books because the Packers have been beating good teams on the road for the entire playoffs.
I think it’s pretty fair to make the Packers slight favorites here.
This I probably could agree with. Of course, this isn’t the insanity you post that I originally took exception with. The most glaring part of the insanity is that the “good Cutler” would have shown up “on any other day.”
We’re agreed that the premise involves Rodgers playing as crappy as he did today. The idea that given this, the Bears would have beaten them easily on any other day? Yeah, insanity.
Just a guess, but it probably is set up that way so that teams can use their EQB in the 4th quarter of blowouts to rest starters and give young developmental guys some seasoning.
I think a more fundamental question would be: why do teams have to declare 7 players to be inactive every week? Teams have (IIRC) 53-man rosters, but they can only dress 46 (including the EQB). What purpose does this serve? If teams were allowed to use the extra 7 players, then they could keep their starters fresher through increased rotation, and the overall quality of play would improve.
I was really worried that waking up today, the shine of yesterday’s victory would be off. I was concerned that, in the harsh light of day and completely sober, I wouldn’t enjoy the Packers’ victory nearly as much as I did last night.
I was wrong. It’s really fucking sweet. Like almost better than sex sweet. Like, I don’t want this day to end because it’s so fucking sweet, sweet.
The Packers went into Soldiers field and beat the Bears, not just for a win, but for the Halas Trophey and the NFC Championship! They completely contained Devin Hester, the O Line only gave up one sack (none to Peppers), and they completely shut down the Bears’ passing game with Dom Capers outplanning and outcalling Martz.
So fucking sweet. I could hear the wails and gnashing of teeth of Bears fans fly across Southern Illinois, where they landed in my ears and made me smile.
Packers win.
Packers win.
Packers win.
Well you got to hear der lamentations of der vimmen, if only you could drive your enemies before you!
The Sun Times is reporting that Cutler has an torn MCL. There was no doubt in my mind that the doctor was going to find something wrong in the knee.
And I am really enjoying listening to Chicago sports talk radio.