They also realize when they can’t physically do it. Ward realized he couldn’t. Dilfer too. MJD. The list of players who sat out games because an injury wouldn’t let them play is long and distinguished.
I agree, because of Lovie’s stupidity and Cutlers’ perpetually punchable face, that it certainly didn’t look good. But, to me, the criticism does boil down to style over substance.
Well, there certainly are plenty of immature quarterbacks, but I don’t think it is a job requirement. Aaron Rodgers, for one, seems like a reasonably mature fellow.
You’ve gotta be mature to hate cancer patients.
Jay Cutler’s so tough he’s only missed one game in his career. Oh, wait, that one’s true.
If Tom Brady had hurt his knee and sat out without a fuss, nobody would have a word to say; or rather, one or two jackasses around the league would, and they’d be roundly excoriated for it. And that’s because Tom Brady has the right “mentality,” which is defined by what people say about him, which is defined by his record.
So really, rather than talk about Cutler’s immaturity or his losing mentality, people should just state his win/loss record in the games they want to talk about and be done with it. That’s all everything anybody talks about boils down to, and the applications are literally endless. A guy on the team who wins can be anything positive you like; a guy on the team who loses can be anything negative you like.
Hell, one guy can cement his legacy as both a selfish self-aggrandizing loudmouth risk-taker and a meek crybaby instruction-taking quitter, as long as Rodgers makes that tackle on Urlacher’s interception.
This is begging the question. Are you arguing that Tom Brady would do this?
Am I arguing that? No, not as far as I can tell.
But you seem to be advancing the absurd argument that he wouldn’t. To which I can only respond that in my universe, 2008 happened, and Tom Brady didn’t play in it.
In the universe I live in, you just moved the goalpost to something entirely different.
Cutler clearly got approval from the medical staff to play, as he actually did play in the third quarter. Show me the game where Tom Brady pulled himself out and moped on the sideline when he had been medically cleared to play.
Your original hypothetical was that if Brady did the same thing Cutler did, he wouldn’t get nearly as much flak as Cutler got. My response to that assertion is that Brady isn’t the kind of guy who would have done what Cutler did. The fact that Brady has ever missed a game is totally irrelevant to that point, and frankly that kind of mindless dodge is beneath you.
I’m not responsible for what you imagine my argument to be.
I said that if Brady had hurt his MCL and sat out of the game without visibly yelling at his coaches that he needed to be in there, this fuss wouldn’t have occurred. And it wouldn’t have. And then I said no, I wasn’t arguing that Brady would ever do that, because I wasn’t talking about Tom Brady’s emotional makeup, but in fact, since you asked, of course he would, because everybody sits out with an injury sometimes. “Pulled himself out and moped” and some frippery about medical clearance aren’t actual facts about the situation; they’re the little bits of extravagant speculation that I’m talking about in the first place.
My point was that you have no way of directly comparing one injury to another, you have no idea what happened on the sideline or in the locker room or in conversation between player and coach, player and trainer, or coach and trainer, so you fill in the gaps with whatever color suits your preconceived notions about that player’s invisible intangible warrior spirit. It had nothing to do with Tom Brady, except that as you immediately demonstrated, Tom Brady is fertile soil for that kind of gushing emotional portrait painting.
There’s definitely some True Scotsmanning going on here, but he who smelt it dealt it.