Chicago Bears’ Jay Cutler Injury Exposes Stupidity Among NFL Players
Published by Christian Blood on January 25, 2011
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Chicago Bears
So once again, we see that Twitter is generally the sounding board for true idiots. Nothing against social media, because I think it is one of the great things about the world we live in.
But like anything else, I guess you have to take the good with the bad.
Sunday’s NFC Championship Game saw two of the NFL’s greatest and oldest franchises matching up for a trip to Super Bowl XLV, scheduled for Feb. 6 at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
Sadly, this game will probably be remembered not as much for its tradition-rich battle for NFC supremacy but rather as the game in which Chicago Bears quarterback Jay Cutler quit.
The Green Bay Packers will appear in their fourth Super Bowl not because Jay Cutler did not play.
They likely got there because Chicago’s third-string quarterback Caleb Hanie did not play the entire game, for it really wasn’t much of a contest until he relieved second-string quarterback Todd Collins in the second half.
The saddest part of this whole episode is how once again we have thousands upon thousands of people offering opinions and suggestions about something they know nothing about.
It’s bad enough that even despite the NFL’s massive popularity, seven out of ten enthusiasts really know nothing about the game.
But even worse is when people, including former and current NFL players, start barking about medicine, of all things.
To start with, Cutler did not quit. He actually sustained a sprained MCL and team doctors determined that he should not return to the contest.
Would it have mattered had Cutler sustained a concussion, a different kind of injury that the league is really paying extra attention to these days?
My early thought was that it would. Now I’m not so sure. Had it been a head injury, Cutler, if conscious, still would have had the same bored look on his face, right?
This is how the Salem Witch trials got started. It also kind of resembles the beginning formula for Adolph Hitler’s rise to power in 1930’s Germany.
In other words, make an accusation with a big enough microphone or under a big enough state of panic, and it becomes reality. Never mind the facts; those can wait. Once this happens, it is too late.
The only difference between history and the present is that the former is just a little older.
Among the true idiots firing away on Twitter during Sunday’s game was Jacksonville Jaguars running back Maurice Jones-Drew, a popular player but certainly not one we would confuse as being an actual doctor.
Jones has since tried to distance himself from his silly Tweeting during the game, but the second one went like this: “All I’m saying is that he can finish the game on a hurt knee… I played the whole season on one.”
For the record, Jones-Drew did not play on a sprained medial collateral ligament but rather a torn meniscus.
Not being a doctor myself, I’m not going to speculate as to which injury is worse but I’ll simply point out the fact that Jones-Drew suffered the injury back in training camp.
Apparently, it was something that could be managed as he still rushed for 1,324 yards in 2010.
Or how about the Tweeting of Arizona Cardinals defensive tackle Darnell Dockett, anchor of the NFL’s third worst defense in points allowed in 2010 which dropped the back-to-back NFC West champs right to the cellar: “If I’m on chicago team jay cutler has to wait till me and the team shower get dressed and leave before he comes in the locker room!”
Now that is true prose, complete with outstanding grammar and punctuation, too!
I am beginning to see why the NFL owners might be getting sick and tired of paying some of these players what they do. I’m just being honest.
Yes, there were a few other Tweets that were in bad taste and completely inappropriate. Even on Monday night, NFL.com has a featured debate between Deion Sanders, one of the Tweeting violators Sunday, and others regarding whether Cutler should have played. I ask this: who gives a flyin’…well, you know.
These are among the same players who are expressing louder and louder concerns about injuries associated with playing professional football, and rightly so. So what was Sunday’s mass expression of stupidity all about?
If this is the kind of unity the players have going for them heading into this winter’s labor clash with the owners, it could be a long time before we see football again.
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