It’s official. We have hit a journalistic apocalypse.
The Green Bay Packers just beat the Chicago Bears for a spot in the Super Bowl and the only thing anyone wants to talk about is the outcry about Jay Cutler’s knee.
In case you missed it, the Bears' quarterback got hurt during the NFC Championship Game. He came out to start the second half, played one series and realized he couldn’t plant his foot and throw. It hurt too much and he needed to sit the rest of the game out.
Apparently, instant feedback is now the only kind of feedback that’s relevant, and boy was there plenty of it.
Players around the league went crazy. Facebook, twitter, myspace, youtube – you name it. FELLOW NFL PLAYERS ripping Cutler for not going back into the game because on TV he didn’t LOOK hurt enough. They called him a quitter and questioned his heart, eluding to the idea that he simply wasn’t playing well, so he wanted to stop.
That’s on a very short list of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard.
He wasn’t playing very well. I’ll give you that. He had thrown an interception and no touchdowns. But this is Jay Cutler we’re talking about. If he was going to quit playing every time he threw a couple of picks we would never have heard of the guy. Hell, in Washington this year he stayed in until the bitter end after four interceptions! If there’s anything we know about this guy it’s that he’ll keep slinging the thing even if it looks completely hopeless.
Never mind the fact that, as it turns out, an MRI revealed a partial tear of the MCL in his knee. Mention that to the instant sports world of experts and analysts and do you get an apology? Far from it. You get things like, “Man shoot that shit up with a needle. He ain’t got to do much jus drop back and throw the ball.” That’s a direct quote from a grammatically-challenged tweet flowing from the advanced mind of a defensive back named Asante Samuel.
Even guys paid for their opinion piled on.
“As a guy who had 20 knee surgeries you’d have to drag me out on a stretcher to Leave a championship game!”
That’s Mark Schlereth from ESPN. Apparently you now aren’t a true team player unless you destroy your career to stay out there. Maybe that’s WHY Schlereth needed 20 surgeries.
Here’s a thought. Maybe the REAL “team” thing to do is say, “I really want to be out there, but I can’t be any help right now. I can’t throw and we’ll have a better chance if I stay on the bench.” That takes guts, too.
The real problem here is that Cutler had the gaul to be unpopular. People don’t like the guy much. I’m sure he’s contributed plenty to that dynamic. I really don’t care. Personally, I’d have liked to see him wearing a headset and holding a clipboard – doing anything he can to help the backups. To me, that’s the bigger crime.
But to call him soft… to say “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” (thanks to the philosopher Darnell Dockett for that little gem) – to say that he’s supposed to be out there on a bad leg or he’s worthless… it’s irresponsible and it’s dangerous.
Because fans read tweets. Kids have facebook. We live in a world now where idiots with blogs are taken seriously. You’re reading this, aren’t you? Jay Cutler didn’t deserve this. But people around the league don’t like him and now they have an extremely deadly weapon to use against him.
There’s no longer any responsibility for what becomes mainstream media. Instant feedback has become an instant problem.
