Jay Cutler is trading in his jersey and helmet for a suit and a microphone this year, but his decision to make the jump to a FOX broadcast booth wasn’t preordained when he was first released by the Bears.
During an appearance on a podcast with Adam Schefter of ESPN, Cutler said that the Jets reached out to him shortly after the Bears cut him loose. Cutler said he wasn’t sure if he wanted to keep playing, so nothing materialized right away. They stayed in touch, but had a hard time finding a date that worked for a visit and it ultimately became a moot issue when the Jets signed Josh McCown.
“The stars didn’t really align for me to get out there,” Cutler said. “By the time I was scheduled to get out there, my buddy Josh had taken a visit and they worked something out with him. It all worked out. I’m happy for him.”
Cutler said he has “no idea” if the Jets would have offered him a contract and whether an offer would have been enough for him to return to the field for another year, but sitting up high and commenting on the Jets’ rebuilding effort seems like a gig less likely to result in physical pain than playing quarterback for it so there probably won’t be too much second guessing about how he played things out.