Windy City Gridiron
Hello, Chicago Bears Fans! For this 30-day challenge, we are exploring the absolutely worst hot take on the Chicago Bears. There are so many great candidates. The “Caleb is a bust” after his first season. The obsession over Caleb’s completion percentage, trying to take away from his amazing second season spent with Ben Johnson.
But for me, the worst hot take, in my time as a fan of the Chicago Bears, has to be the “Jay Cutler is soft” hot takes from the 2010 NFC Championship game when Cutler was forced to leave the game due to an injury to his MCL, and the Bears would go on to lose the game with their backup QB starting the second half.
Let’s take you back. It is 2011 (the game was played in January), and the Chicago Bears are facing off against the Green Bay Packers in the NFC Championship game for the trophy named after Papa Bear George Halas and the right to go to the Super Bowl. The stakes could not be higher. Prior to that game, the Bears had only met the Packers in the post-season once, in 1941. The Bears had traded two first-round picks to the Denver Broncos for Jay Cutler, and Cutler brought his gunslinger approach to the quarterback position to the Windy City. The Packers would be staked to an early 14-0 lead, with Aaron Rodgers running the ball in from the one-yard line, and a James Starks four-yard touchdown run.
However, despite Green Bay’s early offensive success, the game was a defensive grind, with each of the teams combining for 17 punts and five interceptions. A major component of this was the fact that Jay Cutler was injured on a deep pass to Johnny Knox that was intercepted by Sam Shields. He would attempt to play in the third quarter but managed only one series before he left, never to return to the game. The Bears initially put in backup quarterback Todd Collins, who would prove ineffective. The Bears then went to Caleb Haine, who got the Bears on the board with a touchdown. But he made a crucial mistake that essentially cost the Bears the game, throwing an interception to B.J. Raji, who returned it for a touchdown, putting the Packers up 21-7. While the Bears would tack on another TD, the game ended on another Sam Shields interception with the Bears down 21-14 and the ball on the Packers 29-yard line.
The crushing loss was one thing, and certainly, there was a lot to unpack from the game. But immediately, analysts and some former players began calling out Jay Cutler for being “soft” for not returning to the game in the second half. Many NFL players took to Twitter (now X) to publicly question his toughness. Maurice Jones-Drew said “Hey I think the urban meyer rule is effect right now… When the going gets tough……..QUIT” and “all I’m saying is that he can finish the game on a hurt knee .....
