Playing In Pain, Part Of The Game Injured QBS

Sunday at Soldier Field, is Jay Cutler (notes) to face the rival who has made an inglorious end to his 2010 season with a fatal blow to his knee - and reputation - in the process.

When the Green Bay Packers back to the Windy City for the first time since the last victory was 21 to 14 in the championship game in the NFC Chicago Bears, Cutler will be the presence of polarization, if only because emotions not so far away from the quarterback of the local team is sure to evoke.

In a real-time world where the public reaction is instantaneous now the norm, the legions of fans surgeons - some players and ex-NFL - weighed when Cutler left the game for good early in the third quarter.

The conclusions about their physical and mental strength have been established, as they were in the past in many of his colleagues, Tony Romo (notes) Michael Vick (notes) to Alex Smith. Each of these rooms, by the way, will play this weekend despite all suffered a great potential: a broken rib and punctured lung in Romo, Vick and Smith to concussion.

We have been conditioned to believe that we can feel their pain, assess their situations and to assess their readiness for the competition, but it is an illusion. At a time when an old controversy over the falsification of damage to gain competitive advantage has emerged, with New York Giants, apparently employ the tactics of victory Monday night over the St. Louis Rams, the propensity of people to play Dr. judge and jury, while athletes like accident Cutler, is a sham as worrying.

As I wrote then, and again this week with Rich Eisen NFL Network and Kara Henderson, Cutler instant indictment carried a measure of absurdity. In the crowded press box, a local radio journalist, referring to the Internet and comments on Twitter, chanted loudly on the activities of radio and television as the fans called the quarterback, "a word that rhymes with "wussy." "

Charming.

Sustained after the game by his peers as the super-macho linebacker Brian Urlacher (notes), and then exonerated by the announcement that suffered a torn medial collateral ligament, Cutler should be above such nonsense. However, if a similar situation occurs ambiguous lesions Sunday or the next time you're in a playoff game - or ever - you can bet that the stigma will reappear in rapid fire, bursts of 140 characters.

I understand why people felt the compulsion to draw conclusions about the reflection of pain in his knee last January Cutler. The game had been unfortunate for him, until now, and it was this difference, the look of amazement on his face that smelled rather be anywhere but here. Because his personality is not warm and fuzzy, and is closed and unrevealing in most interviews, the public perception of Cutler does not do favors. In this particular case - running and freezing temperatures inefficient - many have assumed he was using the blow on the knee as an excuse to take the easy way.

Conversely, I have followed closely and Cutler's career saw him fight, shake and pop back with an inflexible regularity. As with John Madden, who defended fervently quarter and railed against his opponents in the wake of the NFC championship game, I have a keen understanding of issues related to type 1 diabetes, and how the condition test Cutler on a constant and sustained basis.

[* Sports Radio: Silver Michael Vick, Romo and the Raiders-Jets]

So it was wimping out? The tiebreaker for me is: The man is a professional football player, and I can not believe there was a dip in the biggest game of his life, because almost everyone has and bad enough that the NFL has done in partly because it is just wired that way. As Cowboys cornerback Terence Newman (notes) so eloquently in an article he wrote for GQ magazine in February this year, "Let's face it, many of us are in this game because we're a little crazy ..".

In two decades, I spent more covering professional football, from Ronnie Lott Ray Lewis (notes) was a little twisted guys pulled me in and informed my understanding of this unique place, and violent game exciting.

It can also be very misleading to the viewer's point of view of anyone. See on television or in the press area or a distant perch in the stadium, and it seems that the competence-oriented, strategic and disinfected. Take a trip down to a secondary in the NFL, and it is a brutal series of collisions with people whose thinking is more akin to soldiers than, say, the pro basketball players.

Every time I stuck to the players during the lockout and has generated complaints from fans such as pro-management, "They play a game, these guys should be happy with what the owners want to pay," threw up a little in my mouth. What because some of you played football in high school and were so close to making a career of it, you think you can relate to the guys in the NFL?

I laugh so much that I think I almost broke a rib.

Know this: These guys are highly qualified and skilled workers, despite the expendable, and extravagance at the time of height, weight and speed are overshadowed by his willingness to subject their bodies to the circumstances and stress and irrational unfathomable pain.

As we learn more about the terrifying consequences of repeated head trauma, we begin to get an idea of ​​what the small players such as Vick (who tried unsuccessfully to convince the training team which will remain in the game Sunday night) and Smith (who went the distance against the Cowboys) might shake by concussions and back into the center.

And Romo? Well, next time I hear it described as a guy who did not lead it takes to lead his team to a championship, I would be tempted to restrict the air flow requirement the person.

Playing with a punctured lung and broken ribs is not something that you or I would or would have produced a child from Eastern Illinois is happy to be a starting quarterback. This is what fools no, and no way it can be falsified.

One of his teammates Romo, running back DeMarco Murray (notes), told the radio station Kesner-FM Dallas quarterback, "I could hardly breathe. We were seen only grunt, and when he tried of speaking, it was just the kind of arrest. You could see in his facial expressions he was injured. "

Just like every breath was accompanied by stabbing, so unforgiving of pain, and only one of his lungs were functioning. Romo throws a decision needs to be done - and remain vulnerable to more hits and more serious damage - it seems absurd, but his world is quite normal.

The subsequent admission of DeAngelo Hall Redskins corner (notes) for the Washington Post focusing on the chest and lung area Romo arrived Monday night at Cowboys Stadium - "I have the opportunity to put the helmet on your all evil "- certainly does nothing to change the mentality of the defense. I think Romo shrugged read the comments, unless the act was probably as painful recovery time, even an eye-roll seems physically improbable.

[Related: DeAngelo Hall says that targets the ribs Romo]

I suggest you consider the level of NFL players to push their physical limits on a regular basis, the next time you feel like a weight on an injury is serious, and how it can affect the fate of the team you root or prepared to invest in a fantasy league.

Remember, you're not a doctor - just play one on Twitter. And it's a hell of a lot less dangerous than playing in the NFL.

Posted in: NFL