DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Tailgate Forum Jay Cutler Ripped by Peers

I have thought long and hard over how to reply to this topic. I must admit, yesterday, I was clowning Cutler for looking like he had nothing wrong with him. I was at a party where the volume was low and the voices and music were turned up and the game was on as pretty much background white noise. After hearing most of the facts come out, I have changed my tune. To those on here spewing the crap about being dragged off the field, I ask at what cost? So you can thump your chest and act "manly"? I've played with a broken wrist for well over a month, to the point that my arm was atrophying due to the muscles not being able to work properly. That was not a smart decision. I twisted my ankle so bad that it swelled to the size of a grapefruit and played on it and now that joint builds up so much pressure I have to roll it and "pop" it a few times a day or the pain starts to eat at me. Finally, two years ago, I tore my meniscus and MCL and haven't been the same since. Out of all of my injuries, and I've had many, that was the worst. To take away the ability to plant or cut because the knee is so weak is so integral to ANY position in football it lessens the players impact on the field. Like a fool, I tried playing on it and only made it worse. It took a full year before I felt like I could do half of what I used to be capable of. In retrospect, I should have been smart and pulled myself instead of risking further injury, or taken the time to properly rehab them.

However, at the time, the pain was a relative thing, so I continued. That's not to say I never had injuries that stopped me cold. But to try and quantify another persons pain tolerance is way too subjective a topic for any on here to even act like they know. For instance, when I tore my knee, I could walk fine, stand fine and do everything except run and plant on that leg. None of my fellow players questiones my guts or toughness. When it swelled up the next day though, that was when things got real! Different folks have different thresholds for all kinds of pain. For instance, a friend of mine broke everyfinger on his hand in a game and played it out, but another broke just one recovering a fumble and acted like he was dying. That was two separate people with fairly similar injuries. To further the point, I'm sure that we all have known someone that has had a root canal or other type of orofacial surgery and needed huge amounts of painkillers, as well as known or heard of someone that didn't so much as take a tylenol afterwards for the exact same procedure.

To say that Cutler is a coward, has no heart or is a pansy because of yesterdays actions severely discounts the fact that he took a hellacious beating all year behind the number 30th ranked O-Line. Also, if I'm not mistaken, Cutler has a form of diabetes that is extremely rare for players in the NFL to have, let alone play with. We can all sit behind our monitors and keyboards and pass accusations and rhetoric around espousing our beliefs that WE would have stayed in there! Harrumph! But... Someone like Clay Matthews Jr., James Harrison, Bart Scott and Brian Urlacher aren't exactly drawing a bead on you as you do that either. I think that if Cutler had no heart, it wouldn't have so obviously bothered him in the locker room afterwards when informed that he was being ripped league wide on Twitter. I have a feeling that Jones Drew, Dockett and others would give up a lot to have a QB like Cutler instead of Garrard or DA on their side. As for Neon Deion, him saying what he said is laughable considering his tackling form consisted of turning the other way and running.

IMO Dilfer said it best.
"Great players thrive in tough situations"

Sad day when anyone says "Dilfer said it best".

And no, I did not watch the video.

Quote:

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To say that Cutler is a coward, has no heart or is a pansy because of yesterdays actions severely discounts the fact that he took a hellacious beating all year behind the number 30th ranked O-Line. Also, if I'm not mistaken, Cutler has a form of diabetes that is extremely rare for players in the NFL to have, let alone play with.

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I have no idea what affect diabetes could have on Cutler's reaction to pain or his pain tolerance level. The truth is, none of us, including loud mouths like Trent Dilfer, have a clue what it's like to be Jay Cutler in this situation.

Here is a story about his diabetes...



Cutler has Type 1 diabetes, career not in jeopardy

Associated Press

Posted over 3 years ago


ENGLEWOOD, Colo. -- Jay Cutler realizes he should have recognized something was wrong last season when lost 35 pounds and some zip on his famous fastballs.

"I had no energy," the Denver Broncos' third-year quarterback said Friday. "We thought it might be stress and the grind of going through a whole season. But once I got back here and started working out again, I just wasn't making any improvement. I wasn't getting any stronger. I was still losing weight."

Routine blood tests that are required before players participate in the team's offseason strength and conditioning program revealed the answer: His sugars were about five times higher than normal.

The 25-year-old quarterback met with doctors last month, who told him he's an insulin-dependent diabetic. He got a crash course in the disease and its ramifications if uncontrolled.

"It's a little overwhelming to get that news and realize you're going to have to completely change your life," said Cutler, who accepted his fate after a few days.

"It's not something that's going to go away," Cutler said. "It's something I'm going to have to deal with my entire life and you've got to come to grips with that."

He said he never worried about his career being in jeopardy.

"No. That's the first thing they said to me: 'It's going to affect your lifestyle a little bit, but you'll be able to continue to play football,'" Cutler said. "I'm not the first athlete to get diabetes and I won't be the last."

Other professional athletes who dealt with diabetes and had successful careers include NFL quarterback Wade Wilson; tennis stars Arthur Ashe and Billie Jean King, Olympic swimmer Gary Hall Jr., NHL star Bobby Clarke, baseball Hall of Famer Ty Cobb and boxing greats Joe Frazier and Sugar Ray Robinson.

As long as Cutler manages his disease through exercise, medication and diet, there's no medical reason he wouldn't be able to continue performing at the NFL level. He'll have to monitor his blood glucose levels during games and drink some Gatorade if his sugars drop too low or take a shot of insulin if they skyrocket.

"I've got a lot of people watching me," Cutler said. "It's not going to affect me on the field. I'm going to make changes off the field, eating and stuff like that."

About 21 million Americans have diabetes, meaning their bodies cannot properly turn blood sugar into energy. Either they don't produce enough insulin or don't use it correctly. With the Type 1 form that Cutler has, the body's immune system attacks insulin-producing pancreatic cells, so that patients require insulin injections to survive. It usually, but not always, strikes in childhood.

The 6-foot-3 Cutler said he dropped from 238 pounds to 203 by season's end but is back up to 220 since beginning insulin injections after he was diagnosed last month.

"I've felt great. I've felt 100 times better," he said. "Just a difference now and four, five weeks ago is tremendous. It's hard to explain what you feel like when your levels are at 400, 500, it's different. You don't have any energy, you don't really want to do anything, you sleep a lot. It's tough to deal with."

Cutler said he had all the classic signs of diabetes: unexplained weight loss, frequent urination, constant thirst, lack of energy. Without a family history of the disease, though, he never suspected that was the culprit.

Cutler, the 11th pick in the 2006 draft, threw for nearly 3,500 yards and 20 touchdowns last season but the Broncos missed the playoffs for a second straight year. It was obvious as the season wore on that his arm strength wasn't what it was his rookie year, when he started the final five weeks of the season.

"I'm not going to blame it on that, but thinking back, there were some throws that didn't have a lot on them," Cutler said. "I was able to go out and perform, I just wasn't that energetic. I was tired. After the games, I was completely wiped out. Some games I didn't do a whole lot. There was something wrong."

In the weight room, he couldn't lift as much, and when he and teammates Brandon Marshall and Tony Scheffler gathered in Atlanta over the winter to work out together, Cutler said there were times he couldn't get out of bed in the morning he was so exhausted.

"They would ask me what was up and I would say, 'I don't know. I'm just so tired,'" Cutler recalled. When he went back to campus to visit friends at Vanderbilt, they, too, wondered what was wrong: "I was pale, I was skinny, I couldn't run. It was pretty dramatic."

Now, he feels like a million bucks and he's eager to get into practices and exhibitions to see how his body reacts and how he can keep his blood sugars in control during competition.

As for his changes in diet, no more eating, as he put it, "anything and everything."

"It's a big adjustment," Cutler said. "You're 25 years old, you're used to eating whatever you want, doing whatever you want. If you want to go out to lunch, go ahead and go. Now, you're counting carbs and eating healthier and injecting insulin at the table. You've got to have your insulin, your needles, your glucose meter, yeah, it's a big change. But it's something you have to deal with."

Eating less fast food is a silver lining to his diagnosis, said Cutler, who is looking into getting an insulin pump in the next month and plans to expand his charity work to include juvenile diabetes.

He also wants fans to know he's going to be all right.

"This is a serious, serious disease, and I'm going to have it for the rest of my life," Cutler said. "It's not going to change me on the field. I'm going to have some lifestyle changes, but I'm probably going to be a better quarterback this year than I was last year."


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And I'll reiterate: It's easy for that talking head and all internet tough guys to throw out rhetoric like they've been there. Ever torn your knee up Turk? Ever tried to do any physical activity after doing so? Just because other NFLers are coming out and lambasting the guy, does that make it right? Oh, wait, lemme guess, YOU'D do it, so that makes it okay to criticize? Macho Man Savage ain't got nothin' on HotBoy!!

Yeah, what Wolfley said! Qbs talking tough just doesn't sit well with me. I will presume (not assume) that the twitter studs never had a knee wreck. And Dilfer just lobs crap like this. We saw this with Jake going in and icing the game for opponent. Guess Cutler didn't have enough regrets. If Urlacher says he is tough, we are done. Let's wreck Dilfer or the twits and let 'em prove how tough they are.

I came across an article on CBS.Sportsline yesterday that made a comment that completely and toally switched me to support Cutler (not that I was 100% bashing him, I guess I was questioning him a bit).

Well, the writer said (and I'm paraphrasing), "Since when has Cutler ever asked out of a game he was struggling in? His M.O. is to stay in and throw the rock more and more. His history suggests he rather stay in and keep tossing picks than quit. Plus, the guy got sacked more than any other QB in the league AND still played 15 games this year."

So, I've gone from 51% questioning Cutler to 100% support of him. He's a clone of Favre.....keep tossing it deep no matter how bad you are that day.

Look, depending on what the knee injury is, it is entirely possible that he couldn't even set up corectly, and/or couldn't push off to get anything behind his passes. This might be even worse than an ankle.

Anyway, the Bears coaching staff said that they pulled him out of the game due to injury, so that's that as far as I'm concerned.

Thw WORST QB to ever play in a SB said it. Not exactly my idea of the second coming of toughness. But, I see you are sticking to your stance and ignored the question of if you had ever dealt with anything like this personally, so I'll move on.

Yeah,...I never was on Cutler's back,...

My point wasn't that turf toe isn't a painful injury, it's that Dieon was slamming Cutler when he himself missed a couple seasons.

add that Sanders was never too happy with having to tackle anybody.
I'd grown to like Deion in recent years, now I again wish he'd shut his mouth.

Punch, I totally agree with most of what you said, but I can't help but point to something that stands out in your post that I've been trying to drive home.

Your last sentence perfectly sums up my arguement. How do you know for sure that they are tougher than you? You don't. I read through your post and as soon as I got to the point that you are/were a boarder, I thought, hey, he's been banged up, dude must be tough. But that is ME MAKING AN ASSUMPTION. (Not to say you aren't!) More along the line of how we all ascribe what we like to THINK are shared traits among others. This isn't a case where one is one, this is a case where one is a variable, and a wild one at that! It simply seems to me that far too many people are too quick to place themselves into a given circumstance without properly putting it in context.

For Cutler, this isn't a case of him grinding through a hangnail, this is a knee injury that directly affects his throwing motion. Furthermore, I have a feeling that he didn't think or didn't know that there would be such a backlash against him or he probably would have stayed in the game and risked further injury. For Deion, it happened to be a case of turf toe, and while your post regarding the pain and the physiology of turf toe was correct, I still discredit him due to his habit of shrinking when called upopn to tackle.

Dilfer can take a flying leap. Not because of his time here in Cleveland, but because he rests on his laurels of being a SB winning QB too much and seems to take himself far too seriously. Is he football savvy? Sure. Is he personally savvy? I don't see it. He is the perfect example of right place, right time. I bet that darn near any QB playing in the league that year would have won with the Ravens D behind them. I haven't watched the network since #6s departure, and with morons like Dilfer as their centerpeices for football talk, I see I'm not missing much.