We buried in the Week 12 Morning Aftermath (in order to get more of you to realize that you should be checking it out each week) some strong comments that Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher made to Michael Silver of Yahoo! Sports regarding the team’s direction under quarterback Jay Cutler.
Here’s what Urlacher said: “Look, I love Jay, and I understand he’s a great player who can take us a long way, and I still have faith in him. But I hate the way our identity has changed. We used to establish the run and wear teams down and try not to make mistakes, and we’d rely on our defense to keep us in the game and make big plays to put us in position to win. Kyle Orton might not be the flashiest quarterback, but the guy is a winner, and that formula worked for us. I hate to say it, but that’s the truth.”
Now, Urlacher is “clarifying” his remarks, which when it comes to NFL players who find themselves gnawing on their own feet has become code for “retracting.”
“I’m not taking a shot at Jay,” Urlacher tells Vaughn McClure of the Chicago Tribune. “I’m not one bit taking a shot at Jay. He throws it better, right? And we haven’t tried to run the ball as much. That’s true.
“But Kyle has won games. His formula works. So I’m not taking a shot at Jay or Kyle.”
Look, Urlacher said what he said. And he can now pretend he said something other than what he said, but he said it. And a reasonable person will interpret what Urlacher said as Urlacher taking a shot at Cutler by expressing a preference for Orton.
Undermining Urlacher’s credibility in this regard is his effort to explain away this obvious slap at running back Matt Forte’s inability to break free on a screen pass: “You know why that doesn’t work?” Urlacher told Silver. “We don’t make anyone [expletive] miss. I guess I just don’t realize what great tacklers these [opposing defenders] are. They’re amazing.”
Even in a medium in which sarcasm isn’t always conveyed accurately, Urlacher’s words were dripping like a toothbrush Jerry Seinfeld had just dropped in a toilet.
So how does Urlacher explain his slap at Forte? “Minnesota’s a good-tackling team, and they were up on our receivers pressing all game long,” Urlacher said. “They never backed off. That’s all I was saying.”
Please, Brian.
On the bright side, we possibly have finally identified a procedure for determining precisely when a guy has had one concussion too many.