So after 11 seasons in the NFL and an offseason of not finding a team to sign him, Jay Cutler retires from the league, joins Fox Sports and had this to say through a retirement statement:
Many feel this is the most Jay Cutler way of retiring: A very honest, not pandering kind of way of going about it. The opening statement is very interesting, pretty much living up to the meme of him not giving a f*** anymore, although Adam Gase has already gone out to say that Cutler is very different than what people think he is. And Cutler didn’t try to hide the truth, suggesting he’s pretty much being forced out of the league. The Bears did it with their lack of desire to play him unless they had to last season, and not signing with anyone can tell us a lot of different things, none of them very flattering.
The funniest part of this statement is the ending: Cutler mentions the word repetition three times, misspelling it twice. You can see there was no editing here: Simply from the heart.
And so just over a decade of very average NFL quarterbacking comes to an end. Cutler never became what the Denver Broncos thought he’d be, and after a strong start in Chicago, ended up doing what most Chicago Bears quarterbacks do: Enrage the fans, complain about a lack of offensive line, and miss the playoffs. During his best seasons, when he had a good team and especially good defense around him, Cutler could only get the Bears to the playoffs once, in 2010.The Bears had home field advantage for the NFC title game and lost, with Cutler not finishing game, adding “quitter” to the Cutler-hater perception.
When you’ve made $21.30 per minute since entering the NFL, it’s easier to swallow the underachieving. And Cutler was a starter for his entire career, when injuries didn’t get in the way, with a couple of them costing the Bears a playoff spot.
It’s always preferable to go out on your own terms, without the team that called you their franchise quarterback showing you the way out. But Cutler had a better NFL career than most quarterback that enter the league, and for reasons most out of his hands, couldn’t do more on a team-level. He always seemed to have the talent and potential to do more, but for a number of reasons, it never got past a level of good, at his best.
Cutler didn’t leave a mark on the NFL, but will have enough moments to tell his children and grandchildren about when he was one of the most famous NFL players around. Who knows, maybe he’ll be a much better sports analyst, putting his NFL career to shame. That’s not a bad way to be remembered too.