Jay Cutler just can’t help himself.
If he’s in prime time, he seems hard-wired to show up a teammate or co-worker.
After shoving an offensive lineman and swearing at him in Green Bay and saying he had no regrets, he twice brushed off Bears offensive coordinator Mike Tice on the sidelines last night, including once when Tice sat next to him and Cutler promptly picked up his tray and went to the cool kid’s table in the middle school lunch room.
After the game, Cutler seemed surprised to be asked about it, according to Dan Pompei of the Chicago Tribune.
“I know you guys have to sell papers,” Cutler said. “It’s hard out there. But you can’t blow up every headline. Things happen during football games. Just because I walk off and go get water doesn’t mean much.”
Oh, he was thirsty. Got it. And maybe the lip-readers were wrong in Green Bay.
Cutler eventually hit his stride and threw a pair of touchdown passes in the Bears win, finishing with a gaudy 140.1 passer rating, completing 75 percent of his passes.
“Jay managed the huddle well,” said Marshall, who had seven catches for 138 yards. “He was outstanding. He fired us up before the game. We fed off him.”
Clearly, Cutler doesn’t think the petulant child act is an issue, because he’s committed to the role. And as long as the Bears play a team that turns it over five times each week, and continues to play defense the way they do, it won’t be an issue.
But in an era where quarterback body language on the sidelines gets analyzed to ridiculous extremes, Cutler keeps making it easy for the shade-tree psychologists, who wonder how big the mushroom cloud’s going to be when things don’t go perfectly for the Bears quarterback.